When elections are cancelled

Sometimes you just need to wait.

Not all elections happen as planned; on occasion they are cancelled. This usually means rescheduling, although they can be removed altogether in certain circumstances. In today’s blog we look at what our database can tell us about these elections, including reasons for cancellation and what we do when this happens.

Our database

Democracy Club has been tracking cancellations since 2018 (though we do have a few recorded before then). At time of writing this database contains 2,732 elections marked as cancelled, which translates to 8.97% of all elections over the period. ‘Election’ is defined as a single ward, division or constituency, so if a general election were cancelled that would mean 650 individual cancellations.

Obviously we do need to have created an election before it can be cancelled, and as such our database does not contain elections which were changed well in advance. For example, the 2023 Northern Ireland Assembly elections were not yet in our system when the date was moved to avoid the King’s coronation, so they don’t appear below.

UK election cancellations, 2018-2024

These figures are obviously skewed by the pandemic and reorganisations of 2021, both of which happened at late notice. If we remove these the total drops to 1.06% of all elections.

Looking at our full database we can identify seven different reasons an election may be cancelled:

• Human Error
• Snap general election
• National Emergency
• Local government reorganisation
• Moved to a new date
• Uncontested
• Death of a candidate

Human error

Sometimes people make mistakes. In late 2021, a by-election to Renfrewshire Council was “sensationally scrapped” after it was discovered that the seat had not in fact been vacated, as the councillor in question had lodged an appeal against his expulsion from the council. Similar “drama” also saw a by-election cancelled in Wigan in 2018.

Snap general election

In 2017 a parliamentary by-election (Manchester Gorton) was scheduled for 4 May when a general election was announced for 8 June. The general election date created an “anomaly” where the by-election would have occurred while parliament was dissolved. With no legal framework to account for this situation, the Commons instead dug up a precedent set in 1923, and cancelled the by-election.

National emergency

Elections, including all by-elections, were cancelled in 2020 during the Coronavirus lockdown. This was the most comprehensive electoral cancellation in UK history, although it was not entirely without precedent. The 2001 local and general elections were postponed by a month during the foot-and-mouth epizootic, while parliamentary general elections (but not by-elections) and all local elections (including by-elections) were cancelled during the First and Second World Wars.

Reorganisation

Local government reorganisation (merging or abolishing councils) usually occurs with plenty of warning and without elections needing to be delayed or cancelled at short notice, but there are exceptions to this rule. the most recent example occurred in February 2021, when the government announced consultations on merging a number of councils to create new unitary authorities a mere six weeks before they were due to hold elections. As a result, elections to six councils were postponed under ‘Change to Year of Election Orders’, although in practice the councils were abolished before the new election date. A similar case was that of the West Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner in 2024, a role which was taken over by the relevant Combined Authority Mayor, although here the election was simply cancelled immediately.

Election moved

The government occasionally chooses to move scheduled elections for the sake of convenience. This happened in 2022 when Northern Ireland local elections were moved by two weeks to avoid a clash with the King’s Coronation. More commonly, scheduled local elections have been moved so as to combine them with other elections - this happened in 2004, 2009 and 2014 when local elections were held on the same day as European parliamentary elections.

Uncontested

Uncontested elections occur when only one (or fewer) candidates are nominated to stand for each seat in a ward. Almost every set of local elections will see some uncontested seats, although the number has been falling steadily since the 1990s as the political landscape fractures, with more parties putting up more candidates. 2018 was the first year in UK history when no seats were won uncontested, something repeated in 2024. Uncontested seats are especially common in Wales, where 6% of seats were won without a poll in 2022.

Uncontested council seats, 2019 - 2024

Total uncontested council wards, 2018 - 2024

*All London uncontested elections were in the City of London.

In cases where fewer candidates are nominated than there are seats, the election is re-run. Looking across our entire database, we have at least two elections where no candidate was nominated at all - Yscir, Powys (2017) and Scilly, Bryher (2021).

Death

The UK does not have a single elections act which governs all polls.¹ Instead, each elected body has its own electoral law, creating a complex web of legislation replete with obscure differences and occasional contradictions. There’s no better illustration of this than the laws relating to the death of a candidate.

If a candidate dies² in the period between having their nomination papers accepted and the declaration of poll, one of four outcomes can occur depending on the candidate’s status, the election type, and the number of remaining candidates:

• Election is cancelled and rescheduled (‘countermanded’).
• Election is won uncontested by remaining candidates.
• Election continues with dead candidate on ballot.
• Election continues with dead candidate removed from the ballot (London Assembly regional list only).

However, this is simplifying things, as behind those four outcomes are nine different legal processes, as each piece of legislation has subtle differences in terms of timetables and the like.

In UK Parliamentary elections a poll is cancelled only if the candidate was nominated by a party - independents remain on the ballot, as happened in Rutland in 2019. In these cases a notice is usually displayed in the polling station alerting voters to the fact (if the dead candidate wins, the candidate with the next most votes is elected).

Other than the example from Rutland, all candidate deaths in our database occurred during local elections. Scheduled local elections involve between 10,000 and 25,000 candidates, and it is sadly usual for a small number to die during the campaign. In local polls the party status of the candidate is irrelevant, as any death will require the poll to be cancelled and re-run.

If a poll is actually in process when the death occurs then it is abandoned. This last happened in 2023 (Southampton, Coxford).

Curiously, if a candidate’s death means that there is now exactly one candidate per seat, the remaining candidates are declared elected and the poll is not re-run. We do not have any examples of candidate deaths resulting in an election being won uncontested.

What we do

As an election information provider we spend a lot of time thinking about how to handle and display cancellations to voters. When one occurs we display a notice on Who Can I Vote For, alongside information on why the cancellation has happened and what happens next. Where an election has been rescheduled, we provide a link to the new ballot from the old. In some cases we also include a link to a news article or official statement for more information. Here are some example cancellations: Covid - Reorganisation - Death.

Cancellations also show up in our API and are displayed on partner sites such as the Electoral Commission.

Get the data

A full list of all our cancelled elections can be obtained from our candidate database - simply download the CSV from this link.

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