Unofficial campaign intelligence · by-election of 13 August 2026

THE COUNT BINFACE CLACTON TRACKER

Nigel Farage resigned on 7 July to force a by-election he intends to win back — mid-standards-probe. Labour, the Conservatives, Lib Dems and Greens are boycotting. That leaves 53.8% of Clacton's 2024 voters politically homeless and one intergalactic space warrior as the de facto opposition. This is the ground-war console: where those voters live, ward by ward, and where every knocked door counts double.

WRIT MOVED — CAMPAIGN ACTIVE SEAT: CLACTON (VACANT) ELECTORATE ~78,700 INTEL AS OF 11 JUL 2026

Situation board

baseline: GE 4 Jul 2024

Last result — general election 2024 · turnout 58.0%

Majority 8,405 (18.3%). The four boycotting parties polled 24,219 votes between them — the "orphan pool" this whole operation targets.

Ballot intel · nominations close 17 Jul 16:00

Declared so far (Democracy Club, provisional): Nigel Farage (Reform UK), Count Binface (Count Binface Party), Laurence Fox (Reclaim), Adham Alkhatip (Forward), Kai Stephens (Brit. Democrats), Piers Corbyn (Ind) + 5 more independents; Mr Fishfinger, a Monster Raving Loony and a Rejoin EU candidate reported. Boycotting: Lab · Con · LD · Grn · Restore Britain.

Ipsos national poll (8–9 Jul, n=1,000): asked who they'd prefer to win — Binface 33%, Farage 21%, neither 32%. National sentiment, not Clacton voting intention. No constituency poll exists yet.

Tactical ward map

22 wards · schematic layout · click a ward

Ward dossier

Select a ward on the map or in the targeting board.

Targeting board

Binface Opportunity Index — sortable doctrine

#	Ward	Tier	Opportunity index	Electorate*	Non-Reform % (county 26)	Ind/local vote 23	Turnout 23	Doctrine

* Electorate estimated from seat count × constituency average (~2,460/seat). County % mapped from May 2026 division results (approximate ward→division crosswalk — see methodology). This table doubles as the accessible data view of the map.

Canvass tracker

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Overall door progress

Required tempo

Ward	Tier	Door target	Knocked	Progress	Focus message

Targets = estimated doors × tier intensity (ALPHA 45% · BRAVO 30% · CHARLIE 15% · DELTA 5%). Postal-vote deadline 29 Jul is the real polling day for the seaside-holiday crowd — front-load ALPHA wards before then.

Election predictor

flow model over the 2024 electorate

Scenarios:

Reform 2024 voters turning out

…of whom stay Farage

Orphaned (Lab/Con/LD/Grn) voters turning out

…of whom consolidate behind Binface

2024 non-voters mobilised

Projected result

Victory frontier — who wins where

x: orphan consolidation 0→90% · y: Farage retention 100%→55% (turnouts as set)

Farage holdsBinface gainsdeeper = bigger margin

Intel wire — odds & news

manual feed · refresh via your resident AI quartermaster

Market board · win odds, 7–11 Jul quotes

Source	Farage	Binface	Binface implied	Seen

Binface implied win probability — all quotes

Bookmaker prices include overround (margins), so implied percentages overstate true probability; the exchange/prediction-market dots (Betfair, Polymarket) are the sharper signal. Polymarket volume: $1.53m. Odds are tracked for analysis, not betting tips. 18+, BeGambleAware.

Newswire · newest first

Candidate dossiers

know the battlefield

🗑️ COUNT BINFACE — Count Binface Party

Intergalactic space warrior; terrestrial form of Jon Harvey. First to declare, 7 July. Pledges: build at least one affordable house; cap the price of a 99 Flake at 99p (69% national support, per Ipsos). Backed by an assortment of public figures as the tactical anti-Farage vehicle.

Contest	Votes	Share

Every past Binface run had major parties on the ballot. A boycott by all of them is unprecedented — historic shares (0.1–1.0%) are a floor, not a ceiling. Never previously the principal challenger.

🎯 NIGEL FARAGE — Reform UK

Won Clacton 2024: 21,225 votes (46.2%), majority 8,405. Resigned 7 Jul 2026 to trigger this contest and re-stand — "people versus the establishment".
Context: Commons standards investigation — alleged £5m payment from crypto investor Christopher Harborne, undeclared gifts, crypto-lobbying claims. 74% of Britons want the probe to proceed (Ipsos).
Local machine: Reform swept all 8 Tendring county divisions in May 2026 (47.0% district-wide) and holds 7 district council seats (5 defections, 2 by-election gains).
Expert read: John Curtice expects a comfortable Farage hold. The mountain is real: EXTREME difficulty rating stands.

Also on the ballot

Laurence Fox (Reclaim — 500/1), Piers Corbyn (Ind), Mr Fishfinger (beat nobody in Westmorland 2017 but a legend), Monster Raving Loony (their by-election record: 32–1,114 votes), Rejoin EU, Forward, British Democrats, ~5 independents. Fragmentation of the protest vote is Binface's biggest tactical risk — hence the "unity candidate" demand.

Methodology — how the index is built

the deep & abstract bit

Binface Opportunity Index (BOI)

There is no ward-level poll and never will be, so the index triangulates five observable proxies, weighted:

Orphan pool · 30% — non-Reform vote share in the ward's May 2026 county division. With four parties boycotting, this is the raw fuel supply: it ranges from 39% (Clacton West & St Osyth) to 53% (Frinton & Walton).
Independent habit · 20% — share of the 2023 ward vote cast for independents/local slates. Tendring voters already vote "none of the above" in huge numbers (65% in West Clacton & Jaywick Sands). A vote that ignores party machines is a vote Binface can reach.
Turnout headroom · 15% — wards with 22% local turnout hold thousands of unclaimed voters; a media-circus by-election is precisely what mobilises the disengaged.
Demography · 20% — 60/40 blend of under-65 share and private-renter share (Census 2021, MSOA level). Novelty/insurgent votes skew younger and renter-heavy; Clacton Central (Pier ward) is 48% private-rented.
Visibility value · 15% — hand-scored footfall & media-stunt potential: the pier, town centre, promenades. A bin on a beach is worth ten leaflets.

Honesty box — limits & provenance

Method family: this is demographic-proxy targeting (poor cousin of MRP). Real MRP would need a big survey + census poststratification cells per ward; real party operations layer Experian Mosaic + marked-register turnout history per household. Our BOI is the transparent, open-data version of the same 2-axis logic: support-probability × turnout-probability.
Crosswalks are approximate: ward→county-division mapping (2026 boundaries) and ward→MSOA census mapping are geographic inferences, not official lookups.
Leave context: Tendring voted 69.5% Leave (top-10 in UK); constituency estimate ~73% (Hanretty). High-Leave + 65+ areas are Farage's wall — the model routes doors away from them.
By-election precedent: Clacton's 2014 by-election turnout fell 13pts below GE level, to 51.2%. August + seaside + boycott pulls down; circus pulls up.
Sources: Tendring DC declarations & councillor roster · Wikipedia election pages · Democracy Club · Andrew Teale's LEAP · ONS Census 2021 (Nomis) · IMD 2019/2025 (Jaywick: England's most deprived LSOA in 2010, 2015, 2019 and 2025) · Ipsos 10 Jul · Ladbrokes/William Hill/bet365/Betfair/Polymarket · assembled 11 Jul 2026.