How to read the Clacton by-election result
5 min read
For a man who wants to be prime minister, Nigel Farage's most important audience is the watching country, not the residents of Clacton.
Even as someone who has written about blue and red walls, I have long thought we should think slightly less about geographical divisions when considering the electorate than we sometimes do.
As I’ve said previously, the average Labour voter in Makerfield is substantively demographically the same as the average Labour voter in Hastings. The media’s desire for narrative contrast between different parts of the country is often not the friend of clear-eyed analysis.
Clacton, however, is one of the places where it is safer to make decisive claims. It is one of the most right-leaning seats in the country.
The useful thing in electoral analysis is often not vote share by party, but vote share by bloc: that is, how much of a constituency voted for progressive parties (in England: Labour, Liberal Democrat, Green) and how much for parties of the right (Conservative, Reform, or more latterly, Restore Britain). In our current system, tactical voting and bloc efficiency are the operative question in many races. This is how Labour managed to lose so many seats to Reform at the locals, while losing much more of its vote to the Greens.
The combined right bloc in Clacton at the last election was just under 75 per cent. For comparison, in Makerfield in 2024, the combined Reform and Tory vote was 42.7 per cent, and in Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch’s North West Essex seat, it was 49.7 per cent. There is no way for progressive parties to bloc efficiency their way out of that number in Clacton, as reflected in the fact that while Labour chose to stand a candidate in 2024, the party put in no meaningful resources.
It is just one of the most right-wing seats in the country. That is why Nigel Farage chose to stand there, why he won in 2024, and why he felt confident enough to call the by-election taking place this week. No by-election comes with zero risk – roughly comparable self-triggered by-elections include David Davis’s successful tilt for civil liberties in 2008, and Zac Goldsmith’s unsuccessful 2016 run as an independent in Richmond Park – but the actual risk of Farage losing his seat is negligible. As gambles go, it’s a very controlled one. As such, looking at the victor will tell us fairly little.
Farage needs to be winning Clacton with percentages more familiar in countries with managed democracies, and even if he does, it frankly won’t tell us a huge amount about the party’s ability to appeal beyond its base
However, there are still some things to remember when looking at the tallies.
Reform has underperformed its national polling in by-elections this Parliament. It won in Runcorn, but only by a handful of votes, when national polling would have suggested it should have been on firmer territory. The result in Makerfield was similar: a by-election in a seat 29th on the target list is a must-win for an aspiring party of government. Again, considering that governance ambition – to win at least 326 seats at the next election and preferably more – Farage needs to be winning Clacton with percentages more familiar in countries with managed democracies, and even if he does, it frankly won’t tell us a huge amount about the party’s ability to appeal beyond its base. The only polling out at the time of writing is from Survation, which suggests he will get 73 per cent to Binface’s 20 (in a result influenced by the very large number of candidates, none representing the major parties), on a very low turnout indeed. Failure to perform at this level may suggest an enthusiasm issue for Farage.
That same polling from Survation also suggests that people in the constituency are, generally, aware of what the by-election’s cause is (the £5m is the most popular answer to the question, what is the by-election about). At Persuasion, we test what messages work and don’t work for and against political parties. When it comes to Reform, messages about how it is just like the Tories are among those that fall flat, while the ones that consistently cause damage to the brand are those which focus on self-enrichment, corruption, or more generally a sense that Farage and his party are not on the side of ordinary people. Most relevantly in this instance, voters are more likely to think ill of Reform after being exposed to messages about crypto donations.
While those Farage is hoping will mark their ballots for him in Clacton this week are not swing voters, many likely to see coverage of the contest are. When Davis and Goldsmith made their respective gambles, they were gambling primarily with their constituents.
As the leader of a party, and a man who hopes to be resident in Downing Street before the decade is through, Farage’s bet can’t help but include a wider audience. Our research would suggest that in fighting a contest over crypto donation allegations, the Reform leader has not picked the best ground on which to appeal to the broader audience the by-election brings in.
Steve Akehurst is the director of Persuasion UK
