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Candidate database hits 99.97% ahead of vote

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21:56UTC

Democracy Club's candidate database reached near-total coverage three weeks before polling day, completing the data infrastructure for the 7 May elections.

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Key takeaway

Democracy Club completed candidate data for 3,073 of 3,074 areas, locking in the 7 May picture.

Democracy Club entered candidates for 3,073 of 3,074 areas (99.97%), up from 86% on 10 April . The volunteer-driven ingestion closed the remaining 14 percentage points in three days following the completion of English and Welsh Statement of Persons Nominated publication.

The completed database locks in the candidate picture for the 7 May elections. Cross-referencing against Reform UK's spending records and candidate attrition patterns across nations is now viable for the first time. The single missing area is a rounding artefact, not a data gap.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Democracy Club is a small charity that gathers information about election candidates across the UK and makes it available as open data. Before Statements of Persons Nominated (the official lists of candidates) are published by returning officers, the candidate database contains almost nothing. By 13 April 2026, Democracy Club had information on candidates in 3,073 of the 3,074 areas holding elections on 7 May. This near-total coverage matters because it is the primary source for voter information tools: websites and apps that tell you who is standing in your area rely on this database. The jump from 86% on 10 April to 99.97% on 13 April happened as the official candidate nominations were published across England and Wales.

What could happen next?

Opportunity
The completed candidate database enables cross-party analysis of candidate demographics, prior criminal convictions, and affiliation patterns that Reform UK's cold-calling recruitment story makes directly relevant.

Sources:Democracy Club

Mentions:Democracy Club →attrition →Wales →Reform UK →

First Reported In

Update #3 · Both flanks fracture

Democracy Club· 13 Apr 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Candidate Database Jumps From 2.6% to 86% in Three Days

Democracy Club's 86% coverage on 10 April continued to near-total completion by 13 April, finalising the candidate picture.

Occurred 10 Apr 2026

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This Event

Candidate database hits 99.97% ahead of vote

Complete candidate data across 3,073 of 3,074 areas enables cross-referencing of party slates, spending records and attrition patterns ahead of polling day.

Different Perspectives

Welsh Government (Plaid Cymru under Rhun ap Iorwerth)

Plaid's Cardiff minority government relies on Green confidence-and-supply with no written agreement, the same arrangement that collapsed in Scotland in 2023. Green Westminster polling fell from 17% to 15% in two weeks as Greens took governing responsibility; whether that deflation reaches Cardiff is the near-term test for ap Iorwerth's majority.

Reform-run English county councils (Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk)

Essex named a City-trained efficiency lead over a budget where statute has already committed roughly 98% of spend; Suffolk simultaneously issued a pre-action letter against the reorganisation that will dissolve it. Reform-controlled authorities are spending public money on litigation their own sector lawyers expect to fail while their DOGE units face statutory constraints they cannot override.

Scottish Government (SNP under John Swinney)

Swinney rested the 72-55 Holyrood mandate on the combined SNP-Green bloc rather than his own party's 58 seats, seven short of the trigger he named; he has publicly conceded he has no plan if Westminster holds its veto. The constitutional argument is made; the enforcement route does not exist.

UK Government (MHCLG and Downing Street)

MHCLG has until 12 June to respond to Suffolk's pre-action letter and faces three further counties at the same stage; Downing Street rejected Holyrood's Section 30 demand as a spokesperson lobby line rather than a written statement, declining to open formal inter-governmental correspondence. Both decisions compress Reform's two main legal challenges into the same two-week window.

UK Government (Labour)

Westminster framed the youth justice transfer as a culmination of prior work rather than a precedent, refused a Section 30 order before the request arrived, and omitted both the Representation of the People Bill and any Wales Bill from the 13 May King's Speech. Starmer is described as open to a devolved-leaders summit in June.

Reform UK

Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk filed pre-action protocol letters framing their LGR challenge as mandate-consistent, while 22 Reform councillors departed in 14 days at an annualised rate nearly three times the 10 percent projection. Richard Tice defended the Harborne 5 million pound gift as unconditional, with no acknowledgement of Farage's two contradictory accounts on record.