Nigel Farage resigns: What Clacton’s history tells us about Reform UK leader’s by-election chances

When Nigel Farage won the seat of Clacton with 46.2 per cent of the vote in the 2024 general election, it was Reform UK’s strongest performance nationwide.

With this result, he overtook incumbent Conservative MP Giles Watling, who received 27.9 percent of the vote, while Labor came in third place with 16.2 percent.

The Liberal Democrats and the Greens fell well behind their main rivals, receiving 4.4 percent and 4.2 percent of the votes respectively.

The Reform England leader will contest a by-election after announcing he would step down as an MP after coming under intense pressure over unregistered cash donations and support.

The coastal Essex constituency of Clacton, established in 2010, has a colorful political history.

The party’s first MP, Conservative Douglas Carswell, left the Conservatives in 2014 to join the United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip), then led by Mr Farage.

Mr Carswell then resigned his seat, triggering a by-election which he won for Ukip and increased its majority.

He retained the seat in the 2015 general election, the only constituency in the country where Ukip won, but left the party two years later after disagreements with colleagues and became an independent MP.

At the next general election in 2017 Douglas Carswell did not stand as a candidate in Clacton and Giles Watling won the seat for the Conservatives with 61.2 per cent of the vote, while the new Ukip candidate received only 7.6 per cent of the vote.

Two years later in the 2019 general election, Mr Watling increased his vote further to 72.3 per cent.

Ukip did not take part in Clacton in 2019, nor did Nigel Farage’s new political organisation, the Brexit Party, which decided not to field candidates for seats held by the Conservative Party.

But as the 2024 general election approached, the Brexit Party (then unled by Mr Farage and newly renamed Reform) saw Clacton as one of its best chances of success and chose a former taxi driver as its candidate.

Nigel Farage later announced that he planned to return to his role as Reform leader early in the 2024 campaign and would be the party’s candidate in Clacton.

He went on to win the seat as the former taxi driver received 0.7 percent of the vote as an independent.

Data from the 2021 census shows that 96.1 per cent of residents in the Clacton constituency identify as white; In contrast, the rate is 86.5 per cent in the East of England and 83.0 per cent in the UK as a whole.

Around 94.9 per cent of those living in the constituency were born in the United Kingdom, 2.5 per cent in the European Union and 2.6 per cent in the rest of the world.

The percentage of people claiming unemployment benefits in Clacton in April 2026 was 4.8 per cent; this was above equivalent figures for the region (3.3 per cent) and the UK (3.9 per cent).

Nearly a quarter (24.3 per cent) of children in the constituency are estimated to be living in relative poverty in 2024/25; this is defined as households with incomes below 60% of the national average before housing costs.

The equivalent figures for the East of England and the United Kingdom are 16.1 per cent and 19.3 per cent respectively.