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]
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. [2]
Party primaries or primary elections are elections in which a political party selects a candidate for an upcoming general election. Depending on the country and administrative division, there may be an "open primary", in which all voters are eligible to participate, or a "closed primary", in which only members of supporters of a political party can vote. There are also other variants of primary elections worldwide. Electoral systems using first-past-the-post voting for both primaries and the general election are sometimes described as using plurality-with-primaries, to highlight the structural and behavioral similarity of such systems to the plurality-with-runoff system.
Hartlepool United Football Club is a professional association football club based in Hartlepool, County Durham, England. The team competes in the National League, the fifth level of the English football league system.
A write-in candidate is a candidate whose name does not appear on the ballot but seeks election by asking voters to cast a vote for the candidate by physically writing in the person's name on the ballot. Depending on electoral law it may be possible to win an election by winning a sufficient number of such write-in votes, which count equally as if the person were formally listed on the ballot.
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.
On 23 July 2004, the member of parliament for Hartlepool, in England, Peter Mandelson (Labour), was nominated as the United Kingdom's new European Commissioner for Trade. On 8 September, he accepted the office of Steward of the Manor of Northstead, thereby disqualifying himself from Parliament, and causing a by-election. Polling took place on 30 September.
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.
An independent, non-partisan politician or non-affiliated politician is a politician not affiliated with any political party or bureaucratic association. There are numerous reasons why someone may stand for office as an independent.
"Monkey hanger" is a colloquial nickname by which people from the town of Hartlepool in County Durham, England are sometimes known.
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.
Local authority areas in England typically have an executive leader and a cabinet selected from the local council, similar to how the national prime minister and cabinet are selected from Parliament. In contrast, residents of some areas, or groups of areas known as combined authorities or combined county authorities, directly elect the executive mayors of their local government.
The Borough of Hartlepool is a local government district with borough status in County Durham, England. Since 1996 Hartlepool Borough Council has been a unitary authority, being a district council which also performs the functions of a county council; 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.
Hartlepool Borough Council elections usually take place for a third of the council, three years out of every four. Hartlepool Borough Council is the local authority for the unitary authority of Hartlepool in County Durham, England. Until 1 April 1996 it was a non-metropolitan district in Cleveland.
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 Mayor of Hartlepool was the executive mayor of Hartlepool Borough Council in County Durham, England. Established in 2002 and abolished in 2013, all three terms of office were served by Stuart Drummond.
The Socialist Labour Party (SLP) is a socialist political party in the United Kingdom. The party was established in 1996 and was led by Arthur Scargill, a former Labour Party member and the former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers. The party's name highlights its commitment to socialism and acknowledges Clause IV of the Labour Party's former constitution, as fundamental to the party's identity. As of 2024, it is led by Jim McDaid.
The 1992 San Diego mayoral election was held on November 3, 1992 to elect the mayor for San Diego. Incumbent mayor Maureen O'Connor chose not to run for reelection.
Count Binface is a satirical novelty candidate created by the British comedian Jonathan David Harvey in 2018. He stood as a candidate for Uxbridge and South Ruislip in the 2019 United Kingdom general election against the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, and again at the 2023 by-election that followed Johnson's resignation. He also stood in the London Mayoral elections in 2021 and 2024. In the 2024 UK general election Binface stood against the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, in his Richmond and Northallerton constituency.
The 2019 Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council election took place on 2 May 2019 to elect members of Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council in England. This was on the same day as other local elections.
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.