How Binface Could Win in Clacton

Political Betting is a weekly column by Mark Littlewood aimed at people who like gambling on politics.

We now have some actual opinion poll data from the bizarre by-election campaign currently underway in Clacton.

To no one’s surprise, it seems Nigel Farage is going to win at a stroll. This would also have been the case had any of the major political parties deigned to contest the seat but, in their absence, he seems on course for a margin of victory that might even make a North Korean or Cuban dictator blush.

A Survation poll puts the Reform leader on 73% of the vote and Count Binface on 20%. The array of other parties contesting the seat (including William Clouston of the SDP, Reclaim’s Laurence Fox and John Stevens’s Rejoin the EU) registered at 7% between them. It’s worth noting that the polling was carried out between two and three weeks ago, so I suspect that the smaller, serious parties who are putting in a decent effort will have increased their visibility and their vote share since then. Perhaps rather markedly.

There is little point in placing a stake on the straight outcome of the election – Farage is 1/100 to win. The market to look at is the one on the Reform vote share which is available on the betting exchanges. You can get 6/4 that Farage polls between 70% and 80% of the vote and a very generous 8/1 that he scores between 80% and 90%.

I’m tempted to place a modest stake on both of those outcomes, the latter bet is especially attractive.

My rationale is that Reform is taking this by-election deadly seriously. On the one hand this is entirely understandable: its talisman has staked his political career on seeking a public mandate against the Westminster Establishment. However, it is now the height of summer and a lazier, more complacent political party may have taken the view that a single leaflet drop and an occasional appearance on the high street would be more than enough to get Farage comfortably over the line.

Reform doesn’t see it that way. Activists are flooding into Clacton and one told me that the most frustrating part of his day was discovering how difficult it was to find a door to knock on that the party had not already canvassed.

Come next Thursday, there will be a monumental ‘get out the vote’ (GOTV) operation to try and ensure that every Farage-leaning voter makes it to the polling station. I still expect turnout to be low (the election is not a close contest, people have other things to do in August, some voters may be puzzled about what the election is really all about, etc.) but this just leans me to the view that the Farage vote share might hit unprecedented levels. The other 33 candidates will lack any sort of machinery to meaningfully identify their own supporters, let alone drag them to the ballot box. Farage’s base level of support is so high that as a share of a lowish total, it will be truly overwhelming.

Additionally – and I can barely believe I am writing these words in what purports to be a vaguely serious column about politics – I suspect that the polling overstates the support for Count Binface and other ‘novelty’ candidates. Over the years, I’ve met quite a lot of people who purport to have once voted for the Monster Raving Loony Party, but I’m sceptical they ever really did so. I can imagine the same applies here. Over a couple of pints at the local ‘Spoons, you might find it amusing to joke to your mates that you’re not too sure about this Farage fellow and you’re going to plump for Binface. It’s much more doubtful that you’ll actually take time out of your day on August 13th to do so.

Of course, there is every chance that the good people of Clacton will be going to the polls again in a few months’ time. If the Standards Committee finds against Farage and imposes a sufficiently lengthy suspension from Parliament to enable a recall petition, the voters of Clacton may get yet another chance to exercise their democratic rights in October or November.

I would expect Farage to comfortably win such a re-run, although not by the same ludicrous margin by which he will be re-elected next Thursday. Labour, the Tories, the LibDems and the Greens have all pledged to fight such a by-election. I think there is every chance that one or more of them would be beaten by Count Binface.

In the Bootle by-election of 1990, Screaming Lord Sutch of the Monster Raving Loony Party beat the SDP candidate. It was enough to spell the end for that particular iteration of the Social Democrats.

Those from the ‘legacy’ parties who today are professing to be amused by Nigel Farage running against a bin in a by-election might find themselves chuckling rather less if there is a further contest in the constituency later in the year. The count might currently be a mild irritant to Farage, but if he could beat one or more of the ‘main’ parties in a replay he might yet consign an established political party to the dustbin of history. Now, that would be worth watching.

Mark Littlewood is a former director of the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Director of PopCon.