A novelty candidate is a person who runs for political office in an election as a form of satire or protest, without seriously expecting to win. Novelty candidates are similar to and sometimes synonymous with perennial candidates, but whereas perennial candidates sometimes run on substantive policy issues, novelty candidacies are typically run for satirical purposes.
Novelty candidates and parties are a staple of British general elections, as running for Parliament of the United Kingdom typically only requires a £500 deposit and 10 signatures from registered voters. Candidates may either be affiliated with a novelty party, run as independents, or create their own political party.
The oldest and most prominent novelty party is the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, founded in 1982. Notably, a handful of their policy proposals (such as pubs being allowed to stay open throughout the day) have actually been implemented.
Other examples include Lord Buckethead, "independent space warrior" Count Binface, the Elmo-costumed Bobby Smith, an AI chatbot, and a pub owner who listed his pub as a political party and himself as a candidate for advertising purposes. [1]
In 2024, the Icelandic glacier Snæfellsjökull was running in the Icelandic presidential election. [2] Icelandic law requires presidential candidates to be at least 35 years old, hold Icelandic citizenship, and have no criminal record. To meet these criteria and secure the glacier’s place on the nomination list, campaign founder Dr. Angela Rawlings legally changed her middle name to "Snæfellsjökull". [3] The unconventional candidacy drew international media attention, sparking debates on the political representation of nonhuman entities. [4] [5] [6]
The Cypriot content creator Fidias Panayiotou was elected to the European Parliament in 2024. Entering politics without prior experience, he was widely regarded as a novelty candidate. [7] Panayiotou has stated that his policy priorities include educational reform, specifically proposing the removal of traditional examinations and the encouragement of self-directed learning. [8]
In the 2024 European Parliament election, planet Earth was nominated as a symbolic candidate by The Planetary Democrats. [9] The campaign argued that all beings affected by the Parliament’s decisions should be represented within the institution. Key proposals included appointing Commissioners for Natural Beings and implementing a separate “Nature Parliament.” [10] The candidacy resulted in a legal dispute before the Federal Constitutional Court over candidate eligibility and attracted international media attention. [11] [12] [13]
On very rare occasions, novelty candidates may actually win the elections they run in. A famous example occurred in Hartlepool in 2002, when Stuart Drummond, standing as the local football club mascot H'Angus the Monkey, won the Hartlepool mayoral race and was subsequently re-elected. [14]
The Progressive Party of Working People is a Marxist–Leninist communist party in Cyprus.
The EDEK Socialist Party is a Greek Cypriot nationalist, social-democratic political party in Cyprus.
Presidential elections were held in France on 23 April, with a second round on 7 May.
Stuart Drummond is a British politician, who was the first and only directly elected mayor of Hartlepool in North East England. He was first elected in 2002, under the guise of H'Angus the Monkey, the town's football club's mascot, and was re-elected in 2005 and 2009. He was the first elected mayor in Britain to win a third term. He stood down when his term ended in May 2013 after the councillors and people of Hartlepool voted to abolish the mayoral system on 15 November 2012.
Snæfellsjökull is a 700,000-year-old glacier-capped stratovolcano in western Iceland. It is situated on the westernmost part of the Snæfellsnes peninsula. Sometimes it may be seen from the city of Reykjavík over Faxa Bay, at a distance of 120 km (75 mi).
HartlepoolHART-lih-pool is a borough constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament by Jonathan Brash of the Labour Party from 2024. The constituency covers the town of Hartlepool plus nearby settlements.
A perennial candidate is a political candidate who frequently runs for elected office and rarely, if ever, wins. Perennial candidates are most common where there is no limit on the number of times that a person can run for office and little cost to register as a candidate.
Elections in Cameroon occur in a system of electoral autocracy, as the ruling party manipulates elections and represses political opposition.
H'Angus the Monkey is the official mascot of Hartlepool United. The name "H'Angus" is a pun of the word hang and the name Angus, and is derived from the monkey hanger legend of Hartlepool. The mascot made his debut on 31 October 1999, during Hartlepool's first round FA Cup victory over Millwall.
Non-human electoral candidates have been found in a number of countries. Often, the candidacies are a means of casting a protest vote or satirizing the political system. At other times it is simply done for entertainment value.
The Borough of Hartlepool is a unitary authority area with borough status in County Durham, England. Hartlepool Borough Council became a unitary authority in 1996; it is independent from Durham County Council. It is named after its largest settlement, Hartlepool, where the council is based. The borough also includes a rural area to the west of the town. The population of the borough at the 2021 census was 92,571, of which over 95% (87,995) lived in the built-up area of Hartlepool itself.
Elections to Hartlepool Borough Council in the ceremonial county of County Durham in England were held on 2 May 2002. One third of the council was up for election and the council stayed under no overall control. At the same time an election took place for a directly elected mayor, which was won by independent candidate Stuart Drummond.
The 2016 United States Senate election in Arkansas was held November 8, 2016, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the State of Arkansas, concurrently with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as well as other elections to the United States Senate in other states and elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections.
State for the People was a liberal political party in Georgia. It was founded by the Georgian operatic bass Paata Burchuladze in 2016 participating in the election held the same year in a bloc of the same name. The coalition failed to cross 5% after which Burchuladze left the party, with Nika Machutadze becoming the chairman.
Yes to Europe – Strategy Aghmashenebeli, sometimes translated as Strategy Builder is a centrist pro-Western political party in Georgia. Originally going by the name New Georgia, it was founded in 2016 by Giorgi Vashadze, who along with supporters split from United National Movement.
The 2024 European Parliament elections in Cyprus was held on 9 June 2024 as part of the 2024 European Parliament election. This was the fifth parliamentary election since Cyprus’s EU accession in 2004.
A by-election for the House of Commons constituency of Hartlepool in the former county of Cleveland, England, was held on 6 May 2021. The by-election was triggered following the resignation of Labour Member of Parliament (MP) Mike Hill, who resigned over allegations of sexual harassment. It was held on 6 May 2021 alongside elections to the Borough Council, Tees Valley Mayor, and Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner.
Presidential elections were held in Finland on 28 January 2024, with a second round held on 11 February. Voters elected a president of the Republic for a six-year term. Incumbent president Sauli Niinistö was term-limited and ineligible to run for re-election, having served the maximum two terms, ensuring that the president elected would be the country's thirteenth.
Guðmundur Franklín Jónsson, is an Icelandic businessman and former politician who was known to be a presidential candidate in the 2020 Icelandic presidential election.
Fidias Panayiotou, known mononymously as Fidias, is a Cypriot politician and YouTuber who was elected as an independent MEP in the 2024 European Parliament election.