Parachute candidate

In the , in Newfoundland and Labrador, the New Democratic Party nominated Phyllis Artiss, who lived in St. John's, for the northern riding of Labrador. Artiss was nominated in the absence of any local candidate, and admitted that she found her candidacy to be not ideal: "It would be much better to have someone from Labrador who has lived there all their lives or much of their lives and worked there, and I haven't done that."^[1] Artiss was not successful in her bid.

2008 Canadian federal election

Former Joe Clark, an Albertan, was seen as a parachute candidate when he ran for election in the Nova Scotia riding of Kings—Hants at a by-election in 2000. Clark had been elected leader of the Progressive Conservatives for the second time and was seeking a seat in the House of Commons; incumbent Tory MP Scott Brison had stepped aside for Clark.^[25] He was elected, but in the 2000 federal election, he instead sought election in the Alberta riding of Calgary Centre. He won in Calgary Centre, making it the only constituency to flip to the PCs.

Prime Minister

faced accusations of being a parachute candidate after the Liberal Party nominated her for the safe seat of Toronto Centre at a 2013 by-election (which its former interim leader Bob Rae had represented), as she was born in rural northern Alberta and lived in New York City at the time. She ultimately won the seat.^[26]

Chrystia Freeland

was accused of being a parachute candidate when she sought the Conservative nomination in the Ontario riding of Simcoe—Grey in 2011. Leitch was born in Winnipeg and worked in Toronto at the time of her nomination.^[27][28] Leitch won the seat over candidates including Helena Guergis, the former Conservative Member of Parliament whom she defeated for the nomination and who ran as an independent.

Kellie Leitch

In , the Conservative Party nominated Lea Mollison for the riding of Northwest Territories. Mollison was a resident of Thunder Bay, Ontario, and reportedly never visited the Northwest Territories.^[29] Mollison's campaign ignored local media requests, including an invitation to a candidates' forum, which drew widespread criticism.^[29][30]

2021

who was born and raised in Toronto, served as MP for Algoma East, in rural Northwestern Ontario, during his parliamentary career from 1948 to 1968. In his memoirs, Pearson admitted he did not have "any earlier connection" to the riding;^[31] Pearson had been seeking entry into the House of Commons and the seat had been made vacant for him when Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King recommended that its sitting member, Thomas Farquhar, be appointed to the Senate.^[32] Pearson nevertheless won election eight times before retiring from Parliament, culminating in his own premiership of five years.

Lester B. Pearson

former Ontario MPP (for Bramalea—Gore—Malton, faced accusations of being a parachute candidate when he stood at a by-election in Burnaby South, a riding in British Columbia. Singh had been elected leader of the NDP over a year earlier but did not have a seat in the House of Commons (he had defeated three incumbent MPs for the leadership), and stood in Burnaby South to gain one. Singh pledged to move to Burnaby if he won the by-election.^[33] Singh was ultimately successful in his bid,^[34] and held his seat in the general elections of 2019 and 2021.

Jagmeet Singh

stood for Fine Gael at the 2004 European elections in the Ireland East constituency, despite being from Dublin, and was considered a parachute candidate.^[37]

Avril Doyle

was a successful parachute candidate for Fine Gael at the 2009 Dublin South by-election.^[38]

George Lee

Journalist was described as a parachute candidate by local candidate Veronica Cawley when she stood for Labour in Sligo–North Leitrim at the 2011 general election; O'Keeffe is a native of Dublin but lived in Sligo at the time.^[39][40][41]

Susan O'Keeffe

Lorraine Mulligan was described as a parachute candidate when she stood for Labour at the , despite living in Dublin Central.^[42]

2014 Dublin West by-election

stood for Fine Gael in Dublin West at the 2016 general election; she later attempted to be "parachuted" in Dublin South-West before standing in Dublin Bay North at the 2020 general election.^[43]

Catherine Noone

stood for the Labour Party at the 2019 European elections in the Ireland South constituency, despite living in Dublin. Her team replied that she lived near the border with County Wicklow and her parents are from County Kerry, both counties in the South constituency.^[44][45] Michael McNamara claimed that "a parachute candidate could look like desperation. We [the Labour Party] need to be relevant and have ideas that are relevant to people in rural Ireland."^[46]

Sheila Nunan

was so unfamiliar with Glasgow, he later wrote, that on his arrival to campaign at the 1982 Glasgow Hillhead by-election its skyline was "as mysterious to me as the minarets of Constantinople" to Russian troops during the Russo-Turkish War.^[53] Campaigning as a Social Democrat, Jenkins won the election, taking the seat from the Scottish Conservatives.^[54]

Roy Jenkins

who was first elected as a Conservative MP in 1997, defected to the Labour Party in 1999. He faced much criticism from former Conservative colleagues, particularly when he refused to resign and fight a by-election.^[55][56] In 2001, Woodward did not contest his safe Conservative seat of Witney in Oxfordshire, instead being selected for the similarly ultra-safe Labour seat of St Helens South in Merseyside. During the early days of the 2001 general election campaign, Labour minister Chris Mullin wrote in his diary that "the New Labour elite ... parachut[ing] [Woodward] into one of [its] safe seats ... [was] one of New Labour's vilest stitch-ups", and that listening to him campaigning as a Labour candidate "made my flesh creep."^[57]

Shaun Woodward

was a middle-class southerner whom Labour parachuted into one of its traditional heartland seats, in her case the north-western working-class safe seat of Liverpool Wavertree. She was heavily criticised for having no connection to the Wavertree constituency or Liverpool when she first ran in 2010. When a local radio station asked her basic questions about the culture of Liverpool she could not answer them, and during the candidate selection process she stayed at the house of retiring local MP Jane Kennedy rather than resettle permanently in the area. Some figures in the media suggested that she was only selected for the seat because of her close connections to the family of former Prime Minister Tony Blair.^[58] Despite her initial publicity gaffes, Berger won the seat in 2010 with a slightly larger majority than Kennedy had in 2005, against the national trend, then retained it in 2015 and 2017. After joining the Liberal Democrats in 2019, she unsuccessfully contested the Greater London seat of Finchley and Golders Green in the 2019 general election. She chose to stand there because of the seat's large Jewish population and Remain vote, as well as her affinity towards living in London and choice to raise her children there, rather than in Liverpool.^[59][60]

Luciana Berger

and Ed Miliband were selected to fight safe Labour seats in northern England, South Shields and Doncaster North respectively, despite being Oxford graduates who were born, raised, and living in London while working as political advisers. David was elected for the first time in 2001 and Ed in 2005. Both would later serve as ministers under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and fight against each other in the 2010 party leadership election.

David

defected from the Conservatives to the UK Independence Party in 2014, in turn displacing the existing UKIP candidate for the forthcoming general election in his constituency of Clacton. As Carswell was living in London at the time, the former UKIP candidate accused him of carpetbagging.^[61]

Douglas Carswell

was expelled from Labour in 2003 over Iraq War-related controversies and, despite previously representing Glasgow Kelvin, did not contest a Glasgow seat in 2005. Instead, he stood for the Respect Party in the Greater London constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow, where he used his opposition to the war and the local Muslim population to gain the seat from Labour. Tottenham MP and Constitutional Affairs Minister David Lammy said he was a carpetbagger who had whipped up racial tensions.^[62] After standing down from Bethnal Green and Bow in 2010, he had a two-year hiatus from parliament. In a 2012 by-election, he stood for Respect in the West Yorkshire seat of Bradford West, also with a high local Muslim population, where he made a point of not drinking and again gained the seat from Labour.^[63] He lost Bradford West in 2015 to Labour's Naz Shah, after a divisive campaign.^[64] As an independent, he unsuccessfully contested Manchester Gorton in 2017 and West Bromwich East in 2019.^[65][66] He also attempted to be selected as the Brexit Party candidate in the Cambridgeshire seat of Peterborough in a 2019 by-election, but the party selected local businessman Mike Greene.^[67][68] Having formed the syncretic Workers Party of Britain, Galloway returned to parliament by winning the 2024 Rochdale by-election in which there were a variety of problems with the major-party candidates and Galloway ran a campaign critical of Israel over its role in the Israel–Hamas war.^{[69][70][71][72]}

George Galloway

's selection for the ultra-safe Conservative seat of Henley in 2001, after the party's central office parachuted him in,^[73] was described by senior local Tory Mike McInnes as "a disaster for the integrity of modern politics" and "arrogant in the extreme", Johnson having "blustered in with no knowledge about the constituency". McInnes commented that he could not see him supporting a hypothetical local old lady who was having problems with her housing benefit and asked, "Are people going to feel comfortable going to him?" Likewise, Johnson's main rival, Liberal Democrat candidate Catherine Bearder, gave him a withering assessment. She said: "In Henley, you can put a blue rosette on a donkey and it will get elected. And that’s what happened in 2001... He clearly just wanted to be an MP. As soon as London came up, he was off out."^[73]

Boris Johnson

In 1974 left the Conservative Party and joined the Ulster Unionists, becoming the Westminster MP for South Down, despite having no Ulster connections. In 2002, when ex-Tory MP Andrew Hunter (who had family and Orange Order connections with Northern Ireland) joined the Democratic Unionist Party, the UUP accused him of being a carpet-bagger. It was pointed out the criticism was "a little hollow" considering the UUP's prior acceptance and promotion of Powell.^[74]

Enoch Powell

was the unsuccessful Republican nominee in the 2014 United States Senate election in New Hampshire, despite having represented Massachusetts in the Senate just two years prior. Brown's family had previously resided in New Hampshire, however, and he owned a vacation home in the state.

Scott Brown

a resident of Maryland, was the unsuccessful Republican nominee in the 2004 Illinois United States Senate election.^[75] Notably, he had previously run unsuccessfully for the Senate in Maryland in 1988 and 1992.

Alan Keyes

Democratic then- Hillary Clinton was elected in the 2000 United States Senate election in New York after having bought a house in Chappaqua, New York, in 1999. Born in Illinois, Clinton had previously lived in Arkansas and Washington, D.C.; she served as a senator until she resigned in 2009 to become United States Secretary of State.

First Lady of the United States

Former Robert F. Kennedy was elected to the U.S. Senate in New York in 1964, serving from 1965 until his death on June 6, 1968. He had previously resided in his home state of Massachusetts. His opponents accused Kennedy of merely using the state as a convenient launching pad for the presidency.

United States Attorney General

was elected to the U.S. Senate in Utah in 2018, though he was born in Michigan, resided in Massachusetts during the 2012 United States presidential election, and served as the governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007.

Mitt Romney

moved from Cliffside Park, New Jersey to Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania several months prior to the primary of the 2022 United States Senate election in Pennsylvania.^[76]

Mehmet Oz

List of democracy and elections-related topics