Local Elections Archive

The Local Elections Archive contains details for over 900,000 candidates contesting local elections in Britain since the nineteenth century. New data are being added continuously – most recently a combination of current results (over 25,000 candidates contesting the 2019 elections) and an expanded set of historical elections from the mid part of the twentieth century. For each candidate the database records details of name, party label where applicable, votes received, finishing order in the ballot and whether elected or not. Most candidates are identified as male or female and incumbency is also recorded. Candidates are organised by the electoral district being contested with these districts nested within the relevant local authority. Percentage turnout for each electoral district is recorded, either from official returns or estimated. 

The resulting dataset is widely praised by those accessing it from the UK Data Archive. The ability to track the history of electoral support and party competition for each local authority provides an invaluable time series. But the project aims to make these data available to a wider audience. Each year since 1985 the Local Elections Handbook has provided the definitive record of voting. The Elections Centre website contains digital versions of these and other publications. Additionally, we provide results either on open access platforms or as downloadable files, for example, most recently a compilation of more than ten thousand council by-elections held since 1983.