Another little secret to keep: loads of people are filling in electoral registration forms every day

Dear loyal reader,

It’s good you to have kept the secret of that positive poll finding about likely turnout this May.

It’s also good of you not to have spread the word about how politics wasn’t actually so good and healthy back in the days when turnout was higher and party membership bigger.

So I think I can trust you with a third secret. Just keep it between ourselves, because remember the rule here in Britain is that you’re only allowed to repeat negative stories about the state of our electoral system (even ones where the numbers are selective, misleading and most likely wrong).

It’s this. People are signing up to join the electoral register every day. Not just a few people. Lots of people. Every single day. Even on Christmas Day 1,448 of them, with another 4,997 on New Year’s Day and then over 21,086 on Valentine’s Day.

But those are just the smaller numbers, as I wanted to break it to you gently. Currently over 30,000 people a weekday – and sometimes even over 40,000 – are signing up to join the electoral register. In fact in the last full week (15 Feb-21 Feb) a whopping 237,954 people signed up to join the electoral register. Throw in just one extra day and you have a bigger number than the circulation of The Guardian and The Independent combined. Sure, that’s comparing apples and oranges, but it’s an awful lot of apples.

So keep it secret!

Many thanks,

Mark

P.S. Let’s throw in some peaches to the apples and oranges discussion. Russell Brand sold “huge” numbers of his book after it came out. Huge meant 22,119 copies in 11 days, or 2,010 a day. Electoral registration wipes the floor with him each and every day.

Note on data: these figures are for people applying to be on the electoral register, taken from the live dashhboard on Gov.uk. Not all will translate into actual registrations as sometimes people attempt to register despite already being registered and some people may try to register despite not qualifying. It may also include some people registering under the new system in order to protect their rights to a postal vote, as you have to be individually registered to have one. I’ve tried go get some figures for this and it looks like no-one has them yet. But even with these caveats – and due to the change in registration the ratio between attempted and actual registrations from the past is not a useful guide – it’s a lot of people, every day, expressing a desire of some sort to take part in the electoral system.

The obvious follow-up question is what this rate of applications is likely to mean for the size of the electoral register by polling day, given the myth-bushing I’ve done before about that one-million-which-isn’t-one-million figure. There are so many variables and differences from the past that it’s pretty hard to make any projection with confidence.

However, at the time of writing there have been 1.7 million applications to join the electoral register since 1 December which means, if nothing else, that anyone talking about the likely size and accuracy of the electoral register for May who doesn’t factor this into their calculations is not making serious calculations.