Will her opponent ever be able to live this down?

Probably. Here in Texas, a Republican House candidate died prior to winning the election this month, so there will be a special election to replace her.

And in the 2000 Missouri Senate race, Mel Carnahan got a significant and possibly decisive boost in the polls after dying in a plane crash. His opponent John Ashcroft went on to become Attorney General, so losing to a dead man is hardly an insurmountable humiliation.

Blimey. So this happens a lot, then?

Those are the only cases I know of, but certainly it happens that candidates die when it's too late to take them off the ballot. Sometimes, their party tries to find someone to replace them, and the votes for the deceased actually wind up counting for his sucessor. It's less common in House elections, though, since there's a provision for special elections to sort things out later.

I've never voted for anyone who's dead, though I would if there were a dead person on the ballot.

I certainly would - I live in a rock-solid safe seat, and I could do with a dead candidate to liven things up. And you'd think a place with a demographic like Worthing's would have plenty of opportunities.

Last time round I had to vote for the Legalise Cannabis Alliance candidate pretty much by default, his sole qualification being that he was the only candidate who wasn't Tory, Lib Dem, Labour or UKIP. And a hypothetical Legalise Stamping on Kittens Alliance candidate would probably have got my vote too, for exactly the same reason.