Parachute candidate

• Chrystia Freeland faced allegations of being parachuted in by the Liberal Party to contest a 2013 by-election in safe seat Toronto Centre, given she was living in New York City at the time, which she ultimately won.[5]
• The New Democratic Party nominated Phyllis Artis of St. John's for Labrador, who unsuccessfully contested the seat in 2008.[1]
• Kellie Leitch is considered to be a parachute candidate due to her 2010 nomination in the riding of Simcoe-Grey in Ontario. Leitch is from Winnipeg, Manitoba, and had no previous ties to the riding.
• Andrew Scheer leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, is considered to be a parachute candidate being born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario. Scheer, having little to no ties to the riding of Regina-Qu’Appelle was first elected in 2004 and has been re-elected ever since.

In 2017 Deborah Russell won selection for the safe Labour seat of New Lynn, in south-east Auckland despite being from Whangamomona, a small town in the Manawatū-Whanganui region. She beat out Greg Presland a New Lynn resident for 30 years who had the backing of the local members but lost to Russell who was backed by Labour's Council because of her finance expertise and a pledge to have more women in electorates. Upon winning selection Russell moved to the electorate.[6][7]

• Shaun Woodward MP defected from the Conservatives to Labour in 1999. He faced much criticism from former Conservative colleagues, particularly when he refused to resign and fight a by-election.[8][9] Woodward did not run for re-election in his safe Conservative seat of Witney in Oxfordshire, instead being selected for the ultra-safe Labour seat of St Helens South in Merseyside. Labour Minister Chris Mullin wrote later in his diaries that "the New Labour elite parachuting [Woodward] into a safe seat ... [was] one of New Labour's vilest stitch-ups ... [it] made my flesh creep."[10]
• Luciana Berger was an example of Labour parachuting a middle-class southerner into one of its traditional heartland seats, in her case the northern 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 asked by a local radio station to answer basic questions about Liverpool she was unable to, and during the candidate selection process stayed at local MP Jane Kennedy's house rather than make any permanent home in the area. The media raised suggestions that she was only selected for the seat because of her close connections to the Blair family.[11] She went on to win the seat in 2010 and retain 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 made the decision to stand there because of the seat's high 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.[12][13]
• David 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 whilst working as political advisers. Both would later serve as cabinet ministers and fight against each other in the 2010 party leadership election.
• Douglas Carswell MP defected from the Conservatives to the UK Independence Party in 2014, in turn displacing the existing UKIP candidate in his constituency of Clacton. Given Carswell was living in London at the time, he was accused carpetbagging by the former UKIP candidate.[14]
• George Galloway MP was expelled from Labour in 2003 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 Iraq 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.[15] 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.[16] He lost Bradford West in 2015 to Labour's Naz Shah, after a divisive campaign.[17] Since then, he has made further attempts to parachute himself into constituencies in order to return to parliament. As an independent, he unsuccessfully contested Manchester Gorton in 2017 and West Bromwich East in 2019.[18][19] 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.[20][21]

• List of democracy and elections-related topics