常年候选人（英语：perennial candidate），指一位政治候选人经常竞选某一个民选职位，但很少获胜。此术语一般不适用多次连任的现任政治人物。

常年候选人的性质可以差别很大。部分无党籍候选人在某方面缺乏主要政党的支持或其为其他政党的成员（如美国的第三党派）；其他可能的主流候选人可以持续赢得党内提名，唯因选区被设计为杰利蝾螈而使党候选人永远无法赢得大选（因此这类型往往称为纸上候选人）；还有些人可能经常参与党提名初选失败。许多政治候选人，虽然并非所有，其实充分了解他们永远无法赢得选举，他们的竞选不过讽刺，或推进非主流的政治纲领，甚至藉竞选获得利益（如竞选资金和电视广告）。

A perennial candidate is a political candidate who frequently runs for an elected office but seldom wins. The term is not generally applied to incumbent politicians who successfully defend their seats repeatedly.

Perennial candidates can vary widely in nature. Some are independents who lack the support of the major political parties in an area or are members of alternative parties (such as "third parties" in the United States). Others may be mainstream candidates who can consistently win a party's nomination, but because their district is gerrymandered so that the party can never win a general election, the candidate likewise never gets elected (thus these types are often paper candidates). Still others may typically run in primary elections for a party's nomination and lose repeatedly. Numerous perennial candidates, although not all, run with the full knowledge of their inability to win elections and instead use their candidacy for satire, to advance non-mainstream political platforms, or to take advantage of benefits afforded political candidates (such as campaign financing and television advertising benefits).