Clacton By-Election Odds on Polymarket: August 2026

On July 7, 2026, Nigel Farage resigned the Clacton seat he'd held for barely a year, to force a by-election and run to win it back. The trigger was a set of undeclared personal gifts uncovered by parliamentary scrutiny of his finances. Polls in Clacton are open right now, closing at 22:00 BST (21:00 UTC) tonight, and Polymarket has priced this as close to a formality: Farage at 99.15c, with the satirist Count Binface his nearest rival at 0.95c, and a record 34-name ballot splitting what's left. As of 2026-08-13 08:01 UTC, Farage's contract shows a best bid of 99.1c and ask of 99.2c on $61,451 resting behind the bid; Binface's book shows a 0.9c bid/1.0c ask with $26,404 resting behind its bid. Numbers below are from the Gamma and CLOB APIs, fetched at that time.

Why Farage is on the ballot for a seat he already won

Farage won Clacton for Reform UK in the July 2024 general election with 46.2% of the vote, an 18.3-point, 8,405-vote majority over the Conservatives - his eighth attempt at a Commons seat, and his first success. A year later, reporting from the Guardian and the Sunday Times surfaced an undeclared personal gift of 5 million pounds (about $6.7M) from cryptocurrency financier Christopher Harborne, made before Farage was an MP, on top of a further 25 million pounds Harborne gave directly to Reform UK. A second thread tied Farage to businessman George Cottrell, who paid staff to run Farage's 2024 campaign social media and let him use a five-storey Georgian townhouse near Buckingham Palace, both undisclosed. Rather than face a standards inquiry as a sitting MP, Farage resigned the seat outright on July 7 and announced he'd re-contest it, telling voters he wanted Clacton itself to be "the ultimate judge" of his conduct - turning a finance scandal into a referendum he gets to hold on his own terms.

The market never doubted the outcome, just how much

Polymarket's "Will Nigel Farage win the Clacton by-election?" contract printed its first trade at 87c within hours of the resignation announcement on July 7 and never traded lower. It climbed through the summer as it became clear no major party would seriously contest the seat, reaching a 99.3c peak on August 10 before settling into the 99.1-99.2c range it's held into polling day. Count Binface - a perennial satirical candidate running on a platform that includes a pledge to give every voter a personal apology - is the closest thing Farage has to a recognizable opponent by default, and traded a brief bump of interest: his contract opened at 4.45c on July 7, spiked to an 8.35c high on July 9 as coverage of the joke candidacy circulated, then faded under Farage's steady climb to under 1c by voting day.

WIN PROBABILITY, RESIGNATION DAY -> PEAK -> NOW (AUG 13 08:01 UTC)
Farage    87.0c -> 99.3c (Aug 10) -> 99.15c
Binface    4.45c -> 8.35c (Jul 9) -> 0.95c

34 names, and a joke candidate as the de facto opposition

What makes Clacton's book this lopsided isn't just Farage's national profile - it's who chose not to show up. Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party are all sitting this one out, leaving a record 34-candidate field of independents, minor parties and novelty runs as the only alternative to Reform. Giles Watling, the Conservative MP Farage unseated in 2024, is one of the few familiar names in that field and still prices near 0.1c. Against that backdrop, Count Binface - a satirist who has stood in general elections and mayoral races since 2018 - reads on Polymarket as the closest thing to a protest vote with brand recognition, which is why his contract, not any of the other 32 names, is the one that moved on real volume: $426,092 of the event's $508,153 in 24-hour trading went through Binface's market, versus $82,061 through Farage's. A thin favorite doesn't need much money to hold 99c; a crowded field of long-shots is where the volume goes looking for the next-best story.

Why 99c still isn't a settled market

Polls in Clacton run 7am to 10pm BST (06:00-21:00 UTC) today, and counting starts the moment they close. Tendring District Council, the returning authority, has flagged that a 34-name ballot could push the declaration past the usual early-hours window and toward 5am Friday. That matters for reading this market correctly: unlike a count already underway, where a price move tracks real returns coming in, today's 99.15c is still a pre-election number - the crowd's read on turnout and a fractured opposition, not a tally in progress. Gamma's event record confirms the market hasn't resolved: the closed flag reads false, and resolution is pinned to official results from Tendring District Council and the UK Parliament once the count finishes, whenever tonight that turns out to be.

Following the count without refreshing a news feed

A by-election with 34 candidates and a count that could run past 3am isn't something you want to track by reloading a results page. In polymarket-tui, opening the Clacton event shows every priced candidate together with 24-hour volume and price change, so tonight's count shows up as a market move in the terminal as returns land - the same way it would for any other election night.

$ uv tool install polymarket-tui
$ polymarket-tui

No account is needed to browse markets, books, and charts. The install page has Homebrew and one-liner options.