By-election
When the House of Commons had official confirmation that Mitchell was disqualified, it voted to declare the seat vacant and call a by-election. A Unionist meeting was called for 25 July at the Orange Hall in Omagh to select a candidate; the meeting was presided over by the Duke of Abercorn and the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland Viscount Brookeborough was present. Although there was strong support for the view that no Unionist candidate should stand, the meeting decided after considerable discussion to renominate Beattie.
The campaign was said to have been "remarkably quiet", partly because the polling day (11 August) clashed with the harvest in a rural constituency. Beattie appealed to voters not to disfranchise themselves by returning an abstentionist representative. During the campaign, the Unionists talked up Beattie's chances and claimed that he was winning significant support from Nationalists.
On polling day, Mitchell was declared the winner again, increasing his majority to 806. Asked after the result was known, Beattie blamed his loss on the Nationalists being united against him, and said that thousands of his supporters were away on holiday. To the local press he claimed that Sinn Féin would have had a majority of 4,000 if they had polled their maximum.
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