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Democracy Club has 2.6% of candidate data 30 days out

1 min read

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

Ian Davidson, Acting Returning Officer for Clacton

Davidson's office printed a 90cm ballot paper for the record 34-candidate field, with nothing in electoral law capping candidate numbers or the £500 deposit each pays. He expects the paper's size to raise printing costs and slow the count into the early hours, a strain that follows from the major parties' boycott, not from turnout.

Scottish Labour members

Members now choose between Michael Marra and Joe Fagan after Monica Lennon fell one MP nomination short of the three-MP, three-MSP threshold, a bar set by MPs and union officials rather than the wider membership. Whoever wins takes office having faced only one rival on the members' ballot.

Labour Party

Labour gained Penistone East from Reform on 20 August but lost Harraby South to Reform the same night, a wash that undercuts any claim of momentum. The party can point to beating Reform in a genuinely fought contest, but not to a pattern running only in its favour.

Liberal Democrats

The Liberal Democrats took two of Reform's May wards, Almondbury on 13 August and St Neots Eynesbury on 20 August, the latter on a 29.8-point rise in their own vote share. Both results let the party claim it is the beneficiary when voters turn against Reform, not Labour or the Conservatives.

Reform UK

Reform UK can point to winning Clacton unopposed by the other major parties and to taking Harraby South from Labour, a ward it had never previously contested. That gives the party two results to cite even as three previously held wards changed hands elsewhere in August.

Sinn Féin

Sinn Féin's John O'Dowd ruled out a Stormont walkout on 11 August despite calling the DUP increasingly difficult to work with, closing a question Conor Murphy had left open a fortnight earlier. Only Sinn Féin or the DUP can collapse the joint First Minister office, so the denial gives up the party's own leverage in budget talks.