As part of your subscription to our Advocacy tools, we also provide candidate databases for selected data sets which you can use with Email-to-Target pages.
Before using a candidate database…
We strongly recommend that you use a custom envelope for sending to candidate targets, otherwise delivery is likely to be affected. Please check this article on how to do this, or talk to support.
Which candidate databases are provided?
We provide:
Westminster MP candidates
Devolved nations candidates (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland)
Police Commissioner candidates
London Assembly candidates
Mayoral candidates – note that these should be used as custom contacts rather than a postcode-matched database. Please contact support who can provide you with a candidate list nearer these elections
When are these released?
We would expect to provide a working database roughly 3 months before an election, with coverage increasing every week after making it available. We will provide an ongoing report to show you how many candidates are currently on the list and then you can decide when to launch your campaign.
While this takes place, we will clear the actual target databases (we will mark this as DO NOT USE) since it would otherwise contain out of date data.
Once the election is over and candidates elected, we update the actual databases for you to use with the new targets and close the candidate database. We would have the new database ready for you a couple of days after the results are published on official websites. For a rough guide after the election ends you should expect the database to be ready:
UK – within a week for national elections, or over a month after councillor elections.
USA – 2-3 months
Canada – a number of weeks, usually over a month.
Australia – a number of weeks, usually over a month. We will let you know once the databases have been updated after the recent Australian elections.
What databases will you provide for elections in 2024?
UK local elections in 2024
UK / Special : Constituency lookup 2024 – A new database has been created that includes changes to constituency boundaries. This can be used to label supporters via data mapping. If you do not have this database and would like to use it, please contact your account manager
Councillor databases – will be updated with new targets from the local elections by the end of June 2024, and July 2024 for council leads
UK / English : Police Commissioners – this is now updated and ready to be used as of May 2024. Note that two PCC districts have been abolished – South Yorkshire and North Yorkshire
UK / English : London Assembly – this is being updated and will be ready soo
UK General Election in 2024
Timings
The UK General Election database became available on 5 July 2024. See this article for more information
What about boundary changes?
We will be updating the new parliamentary constituency boundaries once the general election is held, so that supporter postcodes select the correct candidates in the candidate database.
The candidate and post-election database will use the new boundaries but not the current database.
What about candidate databases for councillor elections?
We do not provide a candidate database for councillor elections. There is a lot of work required to maintain candidate databases. Data changes frequently, and often use personal email addresses. This data is hard to collect, and hard to verify.
The councillor databases contain many thousands of contacts, and with candidates as well this would multiply the list by many times. It would be a massive undertaking to provide this accurately.
In addition, ward boundaries change during an election and Ordnance Survey do not release these new boundaries until after the election. It is therefore not possible for us to properly match a postcode to a ward and to select the correct candidates.