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Democracy Club has 2.6% of candidate data 30 days out

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As of 7 April 2026, Democracy Club had ingested Statement of Persons Nominated data from 81 of 3,074 areas (2.6 per cent), all of them Scottish, leaving no independent candidate count for England, Wales or the mayoralties.

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Key takeaway

Democracy Club has processed 2.6 per cent of candidate data with 30 days to go, leaving no verified national total.

Democracy Club, the volunteer-run open data project that provides the UK's only independent aggregate candidate database, had ingested Statement of Persons Nominated (SoPN) data from 81 of 3,074 areas as of 7 April 2026. That is 2.6 per cent of the total, and all 81 are in Scotland. English local authorities, Welsh Senedd constituencies and the six London mayoral contests show zero areas ingested.

SoPN is the legal notice every returning officer publishes after nominations close, listing the candidates standing in each ward, constituency or mayoralty. Democracy Club's volunteers manually enter each notice, area by area. With nominations closing on 9 April for most English councils, the volunteer workforce has a matter of days to move from 81 areas to something approximating the full 3,074 before polling day.

The consequence for pre-election reporting is that no independent, aggregated candidate count exists for the 2026 elections. Any national figure quoted in coverage between now and 7 May is either party self-declared or extrapolated from historical baselines. The gap matters because the Electoral Commission does not publish a central candidate database either; Democracy Club's ingest is the de facto source of truth for researchers, journalists and electoral integrity monitors in the UK. The 5,013-seat English total the database anchors cannot be independently verified against candidate counts until the ingest catches up. A 2.6 per cent baseline at T-30 is not a recoverable position without volunteer surge.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Before people can vote, every area publishes an official legal document called a Statement of Persons Nominated (SoPN), which lists every candidate standing. There is no central government database of all these documents. A charity called Democracy Club manually collects and digitises them, area by area. As of 7 April 2026, Democracy Club had processed documents from 81 of 3,074 areas — that is 2.6 per cent, and all from Scotland. England, Wales and the London mayoralties: zero. The result is that no-one currently knows how many candidates are standing in the 2026 elections. Any number quoted by newspapers or broadcasters is coming from the parties themselves or from estimates. Nominations close 9 April, leaving a handful of days for volunteers to process thousands of documents before polling day.

What could happen next?

Risk
Without an independent candidate database, journalists and researchers cannot verify whether any party's claimed candidate numbers are accurate in the 30 days before polling.
Meaning
The UK's reliance on a volunteer charity for electoral transparency data — with no statutory alternative — represents a structural accountability gap in the electoral information infrastructure.

Sources:Democracy Club

Mentions:Democracy Club →PA Elections →Institute for Government →Wales →Senedd →Statement of Persons Nominated (SoPN) →

First Reported In

Update #1 · Wales rewrites parliament no voter has used

Democracy Club· 7 Apr 2026

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Causes and effects

This Event

Democracy Club has 2.6% of candidate data 30 days out

No verified national candidate total exists for the 2026 elections, and all pre-election coverage quoting figures is using party self-declared numbers.

Led to

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

Occurred 10 Apr 2026

Read story →

Different Perspectives

Electoral Commission

The Electoral Commission confirmed Christopher Harborne's £9m Q3 2025 donation as the largest from a living individual in UK party finance records, noting compliance with PPERA 2000 permissibility rules; its enforcement function extends to permissibility, not scale. No party has formally challenged the declarations, leaving structural concentration of party finance without a statutory trigger for the current parliament.

Welsh Labour

Welsh Labour enters the Senedd election projected to fall from 29 seats to 12 under a closed-list PR system the party introduced, with First Minister Eluned Morgan polling below the constituency entry threshold. The party faces becoming third-largest in the chamber it redesigned, a devolution-era first.

Scottish National Party

The SNP is projected on 67 Holyrood seats, two above the majority threshold, on the first election under redrawn boundaries; John Swinney has stated a majority constitutes a mandate for a second independence referendum. A confirmed majority would reopen the constitutional question dormant since 2014 with no current Westminster route to a Section 30 order.

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government

MHCLG reversed the postponement of 30 elections under Divisional Court pressure, committed £63m to affected LGR areas, paid approximately £100,000 in Reform UK's legal costs, and has not published the legal advice justifying either decision. Robert Jenrick's Hansard account that prior advice already judged postponement unlawful has not been addressed or refuted by the department.

HM Government / UK-wide parties

The government frames the Representation of the People Bill as a proportionate foreign-influence response implemented at unusual speed. Reform UK holds its polling position while staying silent on crypto donation quantum. The Liberal Democrats frame the English local elections as a binary contest against Reform.

Scottish parties (SNP, Conservatives, Labour)

The SNP enters the regulated campaign as projected majority government through opposition fragmentation, not a vote surge. The Scottish Conservatives defend a manifesto the IFS dismisses and face zero constituency seats. Labour is the only party projected to retain any constituency presence beyond the SNP.