Barclay won the election by a significant margin to
Labour's
Liz Craig, obtaining nearly 64% of the candidate votes. Barclay was the first New Zealand MP to be born in the 1990s and at the time of his election, at age 24 he was the
youngest MP in the
House of Representatives. During his term in Parliament, Barclay sat as a member of the primary production committee and education and science committee. He was deputy chair of the law and order committee from 2015 to 2017, and chaired his other two committees for several months in 2017. On 10 April 2015 Barclay featured in news media for criticising supporters of current affairs television show
Campbell Live which had been threatened with cancellation. He subsequently deleted his
Twitter comment. In November 2016, media reports indicated that Queenstown resident Simon Flood intended to challenge Barclay for selection as the National candidate for Clutha-Southland at the
2017 election. At a party meeting on 21 December 2016 to select the candidate for the Clutha-Southland electorate in 2017, Barclay won the selection over challenger Simon Flood. ==Clandestine recording scandal==