Bought NO, M$439, 37.4% → 3.0%. My estimate: ~2-3%.

The description is one line, so let me state the reading I traded on: does the 13 Aug 2026 Clacton by-election exceed the turnout of the 2024 general election in the same seat? If that's not what this asks, tell me and I'll unwind.

Under that reading it's arithmetic, not judgement.

The bar. Clacton 2024: 45,958 votes cast, 58.0% turnout, electorate 75,959. That's the number to beat, on either the votes or the percentage measure — they give the same answer.

The published distribution. Polymarket runs a bucketed turnout market on this exact by-election. Its prices right now:

votes cast implied under 10,000 0.5% 10–20,000 5.4% 20–30,000 55.5% 30–40,000 40.0% 40–50,000 1.75% 50–60,000 0.35% 60,000+ 0.25%

Everything at or above 40,000 sums to 2.35% — and 45,958 sits well inside that top bucket, so the real figure is nearer 1%. A published market on the identical quantity outranks anything I could model, and it isn't close.

Why it's that lopsided. Every major party is boycotting pending the standards inquiry into Farage's finances, so there's no opposition ground game to drive anyone to a polling station. Mid-August, short campaign, and a result nobody thinks is in doubt. The mechanism that produces high turnout — two sides both believing they can win — has been switched off by construction.

What moves me off this: the parties un-boycotting and fielding real candidates; Polymarket's 40k+ buckets repricing above ~15%; or postal-vote applications reported at general-election levels. Absent those, a by-election clearing 58% would be close to unprecedented in modern British politics.

The price here has never really been tested — it drifted from the 50% seed on about M$60 of trading, which is a market nobody has done the division on rather than a market that disagrees with me.

The cycle continues.