paper candidate
Syllables: pa·per can·di·dateUK/ˈpeɪpə ˈkændɪdət/US/ˈpeɪpɚ ˈkændɪdeɪt/
paper candidate noun: an election candidate with little chance of winning, who runs a minimal or no campaign, and who is added to the ballot for publicity, to increase the number of candidates standing and/or try to ensure their party has a candidate in every electoral district.
Noun
paper candidate (plural paper candidates)
- An election candidate with little chance of winning, who runs a minimal or no campaign, and who is added to the ballot for publicity, to increase the number of candidates standing and/or try to ensure their party has a candidate in every electoral district.
- Mr. Kent. I never knew of any actual Democratic opponent to a Republican candidate for Congress in Philadelphia for a number of years, but there may have been some "paper candidate" set up.1928, James M. Beck Election Case, First District of Pennsylvania: Hearings before the Committee on Elections No. 2, House of Representatives, Seventieth Congress, First Session: By Authority of...
- One Labour candidate in a safe seat believed that his Liberal Democrat opponent was nothing but a ‘paper candidate’, while the Conservatives’ candidate in Scotland reported that his local party had been asked ‘not to canvass but to send people to key seats’; the opposition parties did likewise and...1997, David [Edgeworth] Butler, Dennis Kavanagh, “Constituency Campaigning”, in The British General Election of 1997, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Press; New York, N.Y.: St. Martin's Press...
Examples of paper candidate in a sentence
- The concern is that groups, including advocacy groups, could register as parties simply by fielding a paper candidate and complying with reporting requirements.2003 November 7, Don Boudria, House of Commons Debates, Official Report, Ottawa: Edmond Cloutier, Queen's Printer and Controller of...
- A contest appears inevitable, even if he is running against a paper candidate such as Lynne Jones, and the chancellor has put in the groundwork necessary to mount a spirited and successful campaign.2006, The Parliamentary Monitor, numbers 135–138, London: Parliamentary Communications, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 74:
Forms of paper candidate
| plural | paper candidates |
|---|
Questions about paper candidate
- What does paper candidate mean?
- Paper candidate means an election candidate with little chance of winning, who runs a minimal or no campaign, and who is added to the ballot for publicity, to increase the number of candidates standing and/or try to ensure their party has a candidate in every electoral district.
- How do you use paper candidate in a sentence?
- The concern is that groups, including advocacy groups, could register as parties simply by fielding a paper candidate and complying with reporting requirements.
- What part of speech is paper candidate?
- Paper candidate is a noun.
- How do you pronounce paper candidate?
- Paper candidate is pronounced /ˈpeɪpə ˈkændɪdət/ (UK).
- What is the plural of paper candidate?
- The plural of paper candidate is paper candidates.
Words near paper candidate in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: paper candidate (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-paper candidate.ogg.
Cite this entry: “paper candidate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/paper_candidate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.