In July 2024, at a time when candidates were still fighting for their seats, we reported on donations made to political parties during the first 3 weeks of campaigning for the 2024 general election. Now Labour have secured their victory, the full figures for the ‘prepoll period’ – spanning from May 30th to election day – have been released by the Electoral Commission.

Labour received by far the most donations

A look at the final weeks reveals that the Labour Party (combined with the Co-operative Party) racked up £9.8 million worth of donations by election day, more than five times that reported by the Conservative Party over the same time frame. The Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Reform UK continued to tie virtually neck and neck with final sums of £1.9 million, £1.7 million, and £1.6 million, respectively. The total sums donated to other parties were far lower; next in line were the Green Party, accepting £160,000, and the Scottish National Party with £127,998. *

Why true donation figures are likely to be higher

These numbers by themselves however don’t paint a full picture of party finances. For one, sometimes parties are late in submitting donations accepted during the prepoll period. After the 2019 general election, the Electoral Commission opened multiple investigations into incomplete or late submissions.

Secondly, only donations large enough to reach a certain threshold need to be officially reported. In 2023, this amount was raised from £7,500 to £11,180, possibly leaving a bigger proportion of donations undisclosed. Tallying all parties’ donations together, the total amount reported during the 2024 prepoll period was £15.2 million. It is noteworthy that this number is half the £30.7 million reported during the 2019 general election campaign.

However, the year of 2019 saw an unprecedented surge in reported donations, with the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and the Brexit Party (now Reform UK) all receiving record breaking amounts for their parties since donations first began being documented in 2001.

The landscape of UK party financing has been evolving

What this highlights is that donations made during any one campaign offer only a snapshot into wider trends – trends that are most revealing when looked at over a number of years.

For example, although accepting far less than Labour during the immediate build up to the election, the Conservative Party had been boosted by huge sums earlier in the year. In the first quarter of 2024, the Conservatives received £8.8 million, Labour £7.4 million, the Liberal Democrats £2.5 million, and Reform UK £25,000.

In fact, the increase of money flowing into Labour is a stark change of trend for UK party financing. Between 2001 and 2019, the UK saw a rapid growth rate in the total donations made to political parties overall, even when accounting for factors such as inflation. What’s more is that this growth has been disproportionately driven by an increase in donations from wealthy individuals, or “mega-donors”.

Over the years the Conservatives have benefited the most from this growth while Labour saw a decline in donations, particularly those of the mega-donor type, between 2010 and 2019.

This makes it even more striking that during their latest campaign Labour took in £6.7 million from mega-donors, making up 68.5% of their total prepoll tally. This amount is about 42 times more than the £159,442 they took in from the same type of donors during their 2019 campaign. The tide has turned with an influx of wealthy individuals now backing Labour, some of whom previously donated to the Conservatives.

More donations reported from Unincorporated Associations in this election

The £1.9 million in donations received by the Conservatives during the 2024 campaign included 52.3% from wealthy individuals, along with 26.5% from companies.

More remarkable perhaps was how a remaining 20.0% came from Unincorporated Associations (UAs). Although a permissible donor type, UAs have, for good reason, attracted suspicion about their involvement in the funding of political parties. Transparency is the norm for most UK donors. Yet, with less disclosure requirements, the origins of money coming from UAs is far murkier.

In 2019, UAs donated £98,500 during the build-up to the December election, with the Conservatives taking £88,000 and Labour the remaining £10,500. Or, at least, these are the donations we can know of, in that they totalled above the £7,500 reporting threshold. This time around – with the higher threshold in place – the Conservatives were the only party to report donations from UAs, accepting a total of £373,500; about 4 times the 2019 amount.

With their opaque internal finances, it’s becoming ever more vital we close the UA loophole in our regulation.

Question marks remain over the influence of big donors

Election period or not, the more money a party receives over time, the more they have available to spend on hiring staff, policy development, advertising, hosting events for members, and so on. More money does not, however, guarantee electoral success. For example, in the run-up to the 2019 general election Lord David Sainsbury made the single biggest political donation in history, giving £8m to the Liberal Democrats. However, the party went on to make a net loss of seats at the general election.

Still, it appears that over the years the landscape of UK party financing has been shifting. As many big donors redirect their funds to Labour, questions persist over the influence and motives of some wealthy individuals, along with other non-elected entities and their large investments into our political parties.

*Numbers calculated by the ERS using data made available through the Electoral Commission donations search tool.

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From the dissolution of Parliament through to polling day, political parties are legally required to report any large sums of money they receive in donations. Within the first three weeks of campaigning for the upcoming general election, parties accepted over £12 million. Considering how they are polling, it is perhaps unsurprising that from this hefty sum, £8.8 million poured into Labour (including donations made to the Co-operative Party). The Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Reform UK captured most of the rest in roughly equal amounts; the Conservatives took in £1.2 million, while the Lib Dems and Reform UK received just under £1 million each.*

Pre-poll disclosure law exists to provide transparency to regulators and voters alike, making it quicker and easier to spot lawbreaking and corruption.

What counts as a large sum, however, was revised in 2023, raising the threshold from £7,500 to £11,180. Although justified by the government as accounting for inflation, this change was met by the ERS and many others with widespread concern. It could, for example, make it easier for some donations to fly under the radar, preventing opportunities for public scrutiny. The decision also jarred uncomfortably with awareness that voter’s faith in the transparency of campaign finance has been declining over recent years.

Funds tend to flow towards power

Tracking donations during a campaign offers a window into what drives financial backing in politics. For the most part, money flows where success is expected. In the first three weeks of the current campaign, for example, Labour received 72% of donations reported by all parties.

In contrast, by polling day on the 12^th of December in 2019, the Conservatives had racked up £19.4 million in support, making up 63% of all donations reported across the campaign.

Poll predictions are perhaps not the only driver of financial support. The issue of Brexit attracted over £4 million into Reform UK (then, the Brexit Party) in 2019, even with the Conservatives pushing ‘Get Brexit Done’ as their central message. Reform is also doing well this year on donations, tying neck and neck with the Lib Dems and the Conservatives, despite being predicted to only take a handful of seats in the Commons next week at best.

However, a look at the last two elections makes it apparent that the party widely expected to win is likely to receive far more donations during the pre-poll period than any other party.

Some donations are more transparent than others

The most notoriously untransparent of donors are unincorporated associations. These make up a relatively small – but still sizeable – chunk of total donations reported. During the first three weeks of this campaign, the Conservatives received £249,000 worth of support from them.

Ensuring only UK based entities can donate is an important protective barrier against foreign interference in our elections. Still, unincorporated associations face fewer requirements than other donors when it comes to making their sources known, potentially leaving a door open to possible influence. Stricter rules would better ensure only UK-based entities can donate.

Those facing more rigorous checks are individual donors, companies and Trade Unions, who together make up the majority of large-sum donations to political parties. In the first three weeks of campaigning this year, Labour accepted £6.2 million from individual donors, £2 million from Trade Unions, and £520,000 from companies.

The unknown influence of big donors

This begs the question, what influence do big donors have on our politics? Unlike the US and many democracies across Europe, the UK does not ban companies with public contracts from donating to political parties, or big donors from winning them.

Last week The Guardian released an article bringing public attention to how billions of pounds worth of government and NHS contracts granted since 2016 went to companies linked with Conservative party donors. By their calculations, the donors received 150 times more in profit than what they donated in support.

In the article, a Conservative Party spokesperson stated, correctly, that these associations are not evidence of legal wrongdoing. Yet, this very fact stresses the point we wish to make. While it is true donor-party links are not alone evidence of corruption, allowing for a clear conflict of interest weakens our protections against it.

Paired with increasing thresholds on anonymous donations, the laws as they stand are unlikely to reassure any voter already sceptical about the transparency of campaign finance.

Our laws could be stronger

A look at the vast amounts of money donated during this general election campaign brings back into sharp focus the need to reconsider our laws. Extending current transparency requirements to cover more donations, particularly those from unincorporated associations, and increasing the powers of the Electoral Commission to ensure legal compliance, are just a few steps out of many that can be taken to further secure both the integrity our elections and the strength of our democracy.

*Numbers calculated by the ERS using data made available through the Electoral Commission donations search tool. Only donations from weeks one to three have so far been made available for the 2024 general election pre-poll period.

Last week, all UK political parties confirmed which candidates they were standing in each constituency for the 2024 general election. Including independents, a total of 4,515 candidates will be fighting for a seat in the next government.

If you’ve already tried out our candidate name game, you’d have seen how the most common name was David, owned by a whopping 104 candidates. The Johns came in second with 84 candidates called by this name, and the Pauls a close third with a total of 79.

In fact, when tallying up the most common candidate names, we noticed the top 10 in the list are all male names. It is not until reaching position 11 that you come across the female name Sarah, owned by 43 candidates. Of course, this could be due to women having more diversity in their names. However, it is less easy to dismiss that out of the 4,515 candidates standing, only 31% are women. 

We can reach parity sooner with quotas

We strongly believe that women’s equal representation in government matters. Who better to ensure the crucial perspectives of women, making up 51% of the UK population, are equally considered in what has always been a male dominated space? Yet, as covered in depth in our recent report, Pursuing Parity, the only way to guarantee consistent representation in elected governments is through the use of legislated gender quotas.

The wide variation in the proportion of women candidates selected across the UK parties for the upcoming general election tells us why. For the Conservatives, 34% of candidates selected are women. Labour almost achieve gender parity in their selection, with 47% of their candidates being women. The Greens also achieve a near equal split with 45%.  Women make up 39% of the SNP’s candidates. Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats have selected 31% and 29% women candidates respectively. For Reform UK, women make up only 16% of their candidates*.

It is a great sign that Labour and the Greens have come close to equal split in their selection. However, it is also difficult to point at progress when the total percentage of women candidates standing in this election is lower than the 35% of women currently represented in the Commons. This point emphasises how gender parity should not be reliant on which political party has the most support at any one time. As seen in the Welsh Senedd since 2003, backsliding can happen.

Why First Past the Post can disadvantage women

Another concern is that first past the post adds yet another layer of difficulty in getting women into Parliament. Due to ‘safe seats’, a feature embedded in this electoral system, it potentially allows parties to place their women candidates in seats they unlikely to win.

With Labour having selected candidates with a near 50:50 balance of men and women and looking strong in the polls, it is likely we will see more women MPs elected than in 2019. Although this would be an excellent outcome for diversity, it is essential to keep in mind that, without quotas, the success could be short lived.  Short term shake-ups to usual trends do not guarantee enduring representation in our democracy. A change to our electoral system would.

Find out how many candidates share your name

This general election will be the biggest we’ve seen yet for online campaigning. It’s an area where the ERS, along with many others, have long called for updates in electoral law. While there is still a long way to go, one positive step towards this end was introduced in the Elections Act of 2022 which set out new transparency requirements for UK campaigners.

‘Digital imprints’ are designed to make it clear to the public which person or organisation is responsible for promoting an advert. The legislation came fully into force in the November of 2023.

You might recognise ‘imprints’ from print material or digital ads if you live in Scotland, but the new law expands the reach of the requirements both geographically to the whole of the UK as well as to a larger number of campaigners. Irrespective of if an ad is paid for, campaigners registered with the Electoral Commission must now include an imprint with their online posts if they clearly aim to generate support for or against a specific candidate or party; and they are shared in the buildup to an election, referendum or recall petition. These criteria also apply to any unregistered campaigners who pay to publicly post political content online.

What impact do imprints have?  

When it comes to anticipating their impact, it’s useful to pinpoint which threats digital imprints address. Imprints do not, for example, illuminate much about the accuracy of a claim. This makes them unlikely to be effective in helping voters identify political disinformation. For the same reason, a digital imprint does not guarantee that a campaigner is trustworthy, beyond that they are at least compliant with electoral law.

So long as the public are aware of requirements, the absence of an imprint could provide a means of spotting potentially suspicious campaigners. Yet, in every case, further fact checking would be needed to determine this with any certainty. If a campaigner is unregistered and not paying to post, or if their post is purely about a policy issue and does not directly favour any one candidate or party, an imprint would not be necessary.

Where digital imprints do become more useful is in helping voters identify if what they are seeing is, in fact, an ad. ‘Native advertising’, a phenomenon where content is designed to blend in with its surroundings to appear less ad-like, is often used to increase the persuasive power of a message¹Dai, Y. and Luqiu, L., 2020. Camouflaged propaganda: A survey experiment on political native advertising. Research & Politics, 7(3), p.2053168020935250. Camouflaged propaganda: A survey experiment on political native advertising (sagepub.com). In consumer advertising, making influencers disclose sponsorship can help potential buyers identify when an influencer is expressing spontaneous enthusiasm for a product or has been paid to promote it. Knowing the difference matters, because chances are this will change how we evaluate the message. Research supports²Weber, C., Dunaway, J. and Johnson, T., 2012. It’s all in the name: Source cue ambiguity and the persuasive appeal of campaign ads. Political Behavior, 34, pp.561-584. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-011-9172-y that messages promoted by a seemingly unbiased source of information tend to be more persuasive than sources who clearly have a vested interest.

Like brands promoting a product, native political advertising may take the form of a social media post that appears as spontaneous approval for a candidate, or a piece of journalism appearing in a news outlet, while leaving underlying political associations either unclear or completely undisclosed. These methods aren’t limited to online spaces. For example, fact checking organisation Full Fact have recently called for political parties to stop circulating ads that appear as local print newspapers. Through doing so, they can piggyback off the credibility people associate with independent news sources.

Native advertising techniques aren’t necessarily a bad thing for politics. It could, for example, be a useful means of informing the public in new and engaging ways. However, voters deserve the full picture to properly assess the information they see. So far, research supports that political ad disclosures can effectively boost understanding that what is being viewed is an ad³Dobber, T., Kruikemeier, S., Helberger, N. and Goodman, E., 2023. Shielding citizens? Understanding the impact of political advertisement transparency information. New Media & Society. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14614448231157640 . Digital imprint requirements are therefore likely to makes it harder for campaigners to disguise their motives.

Digital imprints will not tackle all the threats faced by voters in online spaces and represent just one piece of the puzzle in a much needed broader course of action. Although less effective in revealing what could be political disinformation, imprints do provide an easily accessible means to spot content that has been designed with the intention of influencing public opinion. While the extension of transparency requirements is a welcome addition to political campaigning, there is plenty more for the next government to look at.

The rules on campaigning need to catch up with the digital age

Add your name: It’s time for an online campaign overhaul.