Electoral_history_of_Nigel_Farage
Nigel Farage is a former British MEP who has stood as a candidate representing eurosceptic parties UK Independence Party (UKIP) and The Brexit Party since 1994. He was a Member of the European Parliament representing South East England since the 1999 election, winning re-election four times. Farage has stood for election to the House of Commons seven times, in five general elections and two by-elections, losing in each by significant margins. He was also a proponent of the UK leaving the European Union in the 2016 referendum, in which the electorate voted to do so by 52% to 48%.[1]
Farage was voted UKIP leader in the September 2006 leadership election, and led them in the 2009 European Parliament election in which his party won the second-highest number of votes and seats after the Conservative Party.[2] He resigned as leader later that year in order to concentrate on the 2010 general election. In late 2010, he was voted leader for a second time after the resignation of Lord Pearson of Rannoch.[3] Farage led UKIP in the 2014 European Parliament election, in which his party won the most votes and seats; this was the first time since the December 1910 general election that Labour or the Conservatives did not get the most seats in a British nationwide election.[4] He resigned as UKIP leader after the 2016 referendum.[5]
The first election to the House of Commons that Farage contested was the 1994 Eastleigh by-election.[6] After standing unsuccessfully for election in the next three general elections, all in a different constituency, he stood in the 2006 Bromley and Chislehurst by-election, in which he finished third with 8.1% of the vote. In the 2010 general election, Farage stood against the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, in the constituency of Buckingham, again finishing third with 17.4% of the vote. Five years later, he stood in the general election in the constituency of South Thanet, finishing second to the Conservative Craig Mackinlay, with 32.4% of the vote. He did not stand as a candidate for election in the 2019 general election.