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Democracy Club has 2.6% of candidate data 30 days out

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18:20UTC

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

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.