Perennial candidates

These are the people, many times cranks, sometimes visionaries like Eugene V. Debs, who run for political office numerous times, often under different party labels each time, and usually never get elected. Perennials are not to be confused with their cousins, the annuals, who only bloom once before dying.

Perennial candidates are often either members of minority political parties or have political opinions that are not mainstream. They may run not with any serious hope of gaining office, but in order to promote their views or themselves. John C. Turmel is, according to the Guinness Book of Records, the most persistent perennial candidate, having run and lost in a total of 68 elections.