August 2026 Results – CLACTON.ORG

My take on the election

A candidate’s view from inside the campaign

“I found this election fundamentally unfair.”

From the media focus on Nigel Farage and Count Binface, to the money behind major campaigns and the difficulty serious independents had getting heard, this election exposed problems I think Clacton should talk about openly.

I saw voter apathy first hand, but I also heard repeated anger towards Nigel Farage and Reform. Several other independent candidates told me they were hearing much the same thing. At the same time, a mock candidate with enormous media exposure was able to beat serious candidates who were trying to talk about housing, care, local services and the future of Clacton.

For me, that raises a bigger question: is the system now rewarding celebrity, spectacle and self-promotion more than serious local representation?

By Martyn O’Brien, Owner of Clacton.org and Candidate MP

READ MORE: Why I think this election was unfair

Media attention and campaign money

In my experience, the overwhelming media attention went to Nigel Farage and Count Binface. The local press also appeared heavily focused on Nigel, while serious independent candidates struggled to get meaningful coverage. At the same time, the money and organisation available to Reform, and to some established parties and campaigns, was on a completely different scale.

Voter apathy, anger and protest

Voter apathy was obvious when I spoke to people. So too was anger towards Nigel Farage and Reform. I repeatedly met residents who told me they disliked what Reform represented but did not feel they had an obvious alternative. Several other independent candidates told me they were hearing much the same thing.

For me, voting for a man with a bin on his head is about as clear a protest vote as you can make. But Count Binface also benefited from an extraordinary amount of national media and social-media exposure that no serious independent candidate could hope to match.

When satire beats serious candidates

We have reached a strange point where a mock candidate with no serious programme for representing Clacton can beat credible candidates almost regardless of how good their ideas may be.

The press coverage on election day summed it up for me. Again, the cameras seemed drawn to the costumed and eccentric candidates, including Count Binface, the Monster Raving Loony Party and the Everyone is God Party. Perhaps a Union Jack bikini simply makes better television than a serious discussion about local services, care, housing or the future of Clacton.

Is the system being abused?

I also saw satire candidates, eccentric candidates and candidates using the election to promote their own cause or personal agenda. In my view, parts of the system are being used for self-promotion rather than a genuine attempt to represent Clacton.

The answer is more local representation

I believe the system is broken. Political parties, celebrity politicians and spectacle politics are damaging voter confidence. The answer, in my view, is more local people being elected to Parliament, people who actually live with the consequences of the decisions being made and who will represent their community properly.

My own view of Nigel Farage as an MP is extremely poor, based on the feedback I hear locally. The nickname “Nigel Mirage” captures the criticism I hear most often: people feel he is visible when there is a camera or political story, but far less visible when they want their constituency MP.

I will stand again

I will stand again. Next time I will be better prepared, and I will go into it knowing that I cannot simply assume the local press or national media will give independent candidates a fair hearing. If local candidates want to be heard, we are going to have to build our own platforms and take our case directly to the public.

This section is Martyn O’Brien’s personal account and opinion as a candidate in the August 2026 Clacton by-election.

The result in context

Winning the seat is not the same as winning Clacton.

Farage won 63.34% of the valid votes cast, but only 27.87% of the full electorate put a cross next to his name. The difference matters when judging how strongly the constituency actually backed him.

72.13%

did not vote for Farage

57,546 registered electors did not cast a vote for the winning candidate.

9,455

votes for a bin

Count Binface finished second with 26.93% of valid votes. Whatever the individual reason, this was a huge protest result.

44,384

people stayed home

55.63% of the electorate did not vote at all. That is the biggest single group in the result.

12,208

more non-voters than 2024

32,176 did not vote in 2024. In this by-election that rose to 44,384, despite the electorate itself being larger.

The whole electorate, not just the votes cast

Every bar uses the full electorate of 79,785 as the denominator.

Did not vote

55.63%44,384 people

Nigel Farage

27.87%22,239 votes

Count Binface

11.85%9,455 votes

Independents combined

2.25%1,797 votes

Other parties combined

2.03%1,620 votes

Not valid / rejected

0.36%290 ballots

The independent and other-party totals exclude Farage and Count Binface, who are shown separately. The 290 rejected or otherwise invalid ballots are the difference between the 35,401 ballot papers cast and 35,111 valid candidate votes.

Postal voting, a first look

Postal turnout fell too.

Sky News reported during the count that turnout among people registered for a postal vote was estimated at 72%, while turnout through polling stations was estimated at about 39%.

That 72% figure needs context. It does not mean 72% of all votes were postal. It means roughly 72% of people who had registered to vote by post appear to have returned a ballot.

13,477Postal ballots issued, 2024

11,306Returned, 2024

83.89%2024 postal return rate

In 2024, 11,092 postal ballots were accepted into the count, equal to about 24.1% of all ballot papers cast. The estimated 72% postal turnout reported for August 2026 is around 11.9 percentage points lower than the 2024 postal return rate.

Our reading: the fall in participation was not confined to people who chose not to visit a polling station. Even among people already registered for the convenience of postal voting, participation appears to have fallen. We think that strengthens the argument that many people did not want Farage, but also did not feel they had another candidate they wanted strongly enough to support.

Using Sky’s rounded 72% postal and 39% polling-station turnout estimates alongside the final official total of 35,401 ballot papers cast, Clacton.org estimates that roughly 9,350 ballots were cast by post and 26,050 in person. These are extrapolated figures, not an official postal-vote statement.

We have asked Tendring District Council for the final postal voting data. We will deal with postal voting, safeguards and transparency in a separate report rather than turn this results page into a postal-voting investigation.

Estimated way people voted, August 2026

Extrapolated from Sky News turnout estimates

≈9,349postal ballot papers, about 26.4% of ballots cast

≈26,052in-person ballot papers, about 73.6% of ballots cast

Postal return rate

83.9%

2024 official

≈72%

2026 Sky estimate

The pie-chart counts are derived from rounded turnout percentages and should therefore be read as approximate. They include all ballot papers cast because published data does not allow rejected ballots to be separated by voting method.

Our reading of the result

Nigel won. But Clacton didn’t want him.

The headline result says Farage won comfortably among people who cast a valid vote. The wider electorate says something else. Nearly three quarters of registered voters did not vote for him, turnout collapsed, and more than one voter in four who did cast a valid vote chose Count Binface.

58.7% to 44.37% Turnout fell by 14.33 percentage points compared with the 2024 general election.

+12,208 More registered electors did not vote than in 2024, rising from 32,176 to 44,384.

Our conclusion: Farage’s dominance of the campaign, the circus around the by-election and the sense among many voters that the contest had already been decided were major factors in the collapse in participation. We cannot know why every individual stayed home, but we do not accept that a 44.37% turnout represents an enthusiastic public endorsement.

This paragraph is Clacton.org analysis and opinion. The turnout and vote figures themselves are drawn from official election results.

9,455 protest votes

People voted for a bin.

There is no sensible way to brush 9,455 votes aside as a novelty. Count Binface took 26.93% of all valid votes and finished a remarkable second.

We cannot claim every Binface voter had exactly the same motive. But a vote for an openly satirical candidate is, at the very least, a rejection of politics as usual. In a by-election dominated by Farage, nearly ten thousand people chose the bin instead.

That is our interpretation of a protest result, not a claim about the private motivation of every individual voter.

Candidates we took seriously

Serious alternatives deserve recognition.

Based on meeting candidates, speaking with them, reading their published material and looking at the seriousness of their campaigns, these are the six we consider the strongest serious alternatives outside the headline Farage and Binface contest.

This is an editorial assessment, not a ranking based only on votes. The six selected candidates are shown in vote order. Martin Davies stood for Freedom Alliance. The other five stood as Independents.

34candidates on one parliamentary ballot

34 Candidates: Is It Too Many?

Yes. In our view, it became ridiculous.

A record 34 candidates sounds like more choice. In practice it created an enormous ballot paper, fragmented attention and made it much harder for serious candidates to explain who they were and what they actually wanted to do for Clacton.

Satire and protest have a legitimate place in British politics, and people have every right to stand if they meet the legal requirements. But when novelty candidates, cause campaigns, personal publicity exercises and genuinely local candidates all compete on the same huge ballot, the people trying to present a serious programme for the constituency can disappear into the noise.

Our concern is not that people should be prevented from standing. It is that an election should primarily be about who is genuinely prepared to represent the constituency, not simply who can use a parliamentary ballot as a national platform.

See the original 34 Candidates guide

♥

Everyone else still deserves to be seen.

Most of the candidates received a fraction of the coverage given to Farage and Binface. Whatever their politics, standing for Parliament takes time, money, effort and a willingness to put yourself in front of the public. The league table below is for everyone else. Farage and Binface are deliberately excluded because they already dominate the story above.

Everyone else

League table, ranked by votes

32 candidates, excluding Nigel Farage and Count Binface. The full table is written directly into the page, so it remains visible even if WordPress blocks the filter script. Candidate images and profile links match the Clacton.org 34 Candidates guide.

Rank	Candidate	Party / label	Votes	%	Political position	Profile
1	John Stevens	Rejoin EU	492	1.40%	Centre	View profile
2	Tony Francis Serious selection	Independent	432	1.23%	Unclear	View profile
3	Pamela Walford	Independent	371	1.06%	Unclear	View profile
4	Laurence Fox	The Reclaim Party	347	0.99%	Right	View profile
5	William Stuart James Clouston	Social Democratic Party	256	0.73%	Mixed	View profile
6	Nick Pelas Serious selection	Independent	202	0.58%	Centre	View profile
7	James Ransley	Consensus Party Candidate	192	0.55%	Unclear	View profile
8	SR Stephen Richard Ingram	Independent	159	0.45%	Unclear	View profile
9	Kai Stephens	British Democrats	132	0.38%	Far Right	View profile
10	Attieh Fard Serious selection	Independent	126	0.36%	Centre	View profile
11	Derrick Norbert Morris	Independent	100	0.28%	Unclear	View profile
12	Martyn O'Brien Serious selection	Independent	65	0.19%	Centre Right	View profile
13	Martin Davies Serious selection	Freedom Alliance	60	0.17%	Centre Right	View profile
14	Robin Green	Independent	59	0.17%	Unclear	View profile
15	Rees Cowne	Independent	50	0.14%	Centre	View profile
16	Adham Alkhatip	The Forward Party	49	0.14%	Left	View profile
17	Amy Morris	Independent	46	0.13%	Unclear	View profile
18	Andy Erlam	Independent	44	0.13%	Centre Left	View profile
19	Joseph 77	Independent	42	0.12%	N/A	View profile
20	Nick The Incredible Flying Brick Satire / protest	The Official Monster Raving Loony Party	28	0.08%	N/A	View profile
21	Ketankumar Pipaliya	UK VOICE safer and stronger UK	21	0.06%	Mixed	View profile
22	Michael Noel O'Keeffe Serious selection	Independent	19	0.05%	Centre	View profile
23	Howling Laud Hope Satire / protest	The Official Monster Raving Loony Party	18	0.05%	N/A	View profile
24	Tony Cane	Independent	17	0.05%	Unclear	View profile
25	Daniel Pocock	Independent	16	0.05%	Unclear	View profile
26	Baron Von Thunderclap Satire / protest	The Official Monster Raving Loony Party	15	0.04%	N/A	View profile
27	Abi Hookway	Independent	14	0.04%	Centre Right	View profile
28	Marc Wilkinson	Independent	11	0.03%	Centre	View profile
29	Marcus White	Everyone is God Party	10	0.03%	N/A	View profile
30	Gerry Smith	Independent	9	0.03%	Unclear	View profile
31	Woke Trump Carrzee	Independent	8	0.02%	N/A	View profile
32	Glenn Charles Cummings	Independent	7	0.02%	Unclear	View profile

No candidates match those filters.

Political position indicators: these are approximate editorial estimates carried across from the Clacton.org 34 Candidates guide. They are not candidate-approved labels and should not be treated as scientific measurements.

Sources: 2026 result and candidate vote totals: Tendring District Council, 14 August 2026. Postal turnout estimates: Sky News live Clacton by-election coverage.

2024 comparison: UK Parliament election results, Clacton, 4 July 2024. Postal data: Electoral Commission 2024 supporting data. The 2024 electorate was 78,245, with 45,958 valid and 111 invalid votes, giving 46,069 ballot papers cast and 32,176 registered electors who did not vote.

Candidate descriptions, images, profiles and political-position indicators: Clacton.org 34 Candidates guide.

Calculation note: 2026 valid candidate votes total 35,111. With 35,401 ballot papers cast, 290 were rejected or otherwise not included in candidate totals. Turnout fell from 58.7% in 2024 to 44.37% in August 2026, a fall of 14.33 percentage points.

Candidate-result correction: Clacton.org records Martyn O’Brien on 65 votes and Michael Noel O’Keeffe on 19. The current Tendring District Council web article appears to transpose those two figures. This page uses the corrected figures supplied by the author from the count.

Report and analysis

Author: Martyn O’Brien

You are welcome to quote, reference or discuss this report. If you reproduce or use all or any part of it, you must clearly credit Martyn O’Brien as the author and include a clear clickable link back to the original report on Clacton.org.

Where substantial sections, statistics, analysis, graphics or tables from this report are reproduced, the source should be identified as Martyn O’Brien, Clacton.org.

Original report on Clacton.org

Nigel Farage image: Derek Bennett, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. Other candidate images are drawn from the same public candidate sources used on Clacton.org’s 34 Candidates page.

Nigel Claims Victory. Clacton Tells a Different Story.