Candidate spending in the 2024 general election

On 18 March 2025, the Electoral Commission published headline figures which provided detail on what candidates spent in the 2024 general election.

Why is candidate spending reported (and regulated) differently to party spending?

Election spending in the UK is regulated in two ways:

• by candidates (at constituency level)
• by parties (at national level)

The separate regulation of candidate and party spending is largely historical. Elections at the constituency level have been regulated since the Corrupt and Illegal Practices (Prevention) Act 1883, which was intended to reduce electoral malpractice and better maintain the democratic order.

The act included measures such as criminalising bribery and banning people found guilty of corruption from standing for election for seven years. It also introduced spending limits for candidates.

Alongside the expansion of the eligible electorate via several acts in the 19th and 20th centuries, the act reformulated the party system and party organisation. It also set the precedent for the approach of regulating political finance separately for candidates and parties.

Candidate spending (in other words constituency-level spending) largely remains underpinned by the Representation of the People Act 1983 (superseding the 1883 act), meaning candidate spending returns are managed locally, with enforcement by the police.

Party spending (in other words national-level spending) has only been systematically regulated since the 2001 general election, the first election after the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 was passed.

This means that there are different reporting requirements around candidate and party spending, and different spending limits in place. One consequence of the separate reporting of candidate and party spending is that there are also different rules on the reporting of donations. A recent academic paper argued that donations to parties have to be more transparent than to candidates which may in turn incentivise donations to candidates – particularly for those wanting to circumvent transparency requirements.

How much did candidates spend in 2019 and 2024?

Candidates spent more in the 2024 general election than they did in the 2019 general election, but not by much. Total reported candidate spending in 2024 was £23.3 million; in 2019 it was £16.4 million. However, if we adjust that number for inflation, spending in 2019 was £20.3 million.

There was considerable variation in the amount of candidate spending between the six parties with the highest vote share in both 2019 and 2024, as shown in the chart below. Candidates from all these parties, aside from the Brexit Party/Reform UK, spent more in 2024 than they did in 2019 in cash terms (unadjusted for inflation).

However, if we adjust for inflation, only the Labour Party candidates spent considerably more in 2024 than in 2019. Once the figures are adjusted for inflation, it becomes clear that the Liberal Democrat and the Scottish National Party candidates spent more in 2019 than they did in 2024.

So, at the candidate level, there was no significant uptick in overall spending, though there was variation between candidates from different parties. This is despite the fact that spending limits were increased in 2023 by “80% to account for inflation since they were instituted in 2000”. It remains to be seen whether overall party spending figures will follow this trend, and they tend to be much higher than candidate spending totals. For context, total party spending in 2019 was £56.2 million (in cash terms) against £16.4 million candidate spend (in cash terms).

What did candidates spend money on in 2019 and 2024?

The Electoral Commission data divides spending into seven different categories:

• advertising
• unsolicited material
• transport
• public meetings
• agent and staff
• accommodation
• personal expenses

The chart below shows reported spending, by category, for 2019 and 2024 and shows that:

• Advertising and unsolicited material (which includes services like leaflet printing and/or delivery) dominate most candidate spending.
• Unsolicited material is especially prevalent. In 2024, unsolicited material accounted for nearly two thirds (64%) of total candidate spending. In 2019, unsolicited material accounted for an almost identical proportion (66%) of total candidate spending.

Given the focus in popular discourse on the rise of online campaigning, particularly via social media platforms, such significant levels of spending on unsolicited material might seem surprising. However, one of the perceived advantages of online advertising is that it is cheaper and more efficient than leafleting, so online advertising could be more prevalent than unsolicited materials despite receiving less spending.

There is also a lot of evidence, dating from at least 1971 (and a paper based on the canvassing, or not, of two tower blocks in Dundee), which shows that door-to-door canvassing and leafleting are powerful tools. Or, as Professor Phil Cowley put it in a recent issue of The House magazine, “when you go out in the wind and rain to fight the good fight, armed with only a pile of leaflets and a warm coat, you aren’t wasting your time”.

The candidate figures from 2019 and 2024 also echo academic work which conducted a large-scale audit of party spending in the 2019 general election, via the invoices provided by parties to the Electoral Commission. This study revealed that “whilst data-driven techniques are evident, they are by no means dominant” and that most party expenditure was on campaign material printing and paid leaflet delivery. This project also suggested that there should be a review of the spending categories used in returns for party spending as they “do not provide a full picture of election activity, particularly as it relates to data-driven campaigning”.

Is there a link between candidate spending and marginality?

Using the Commons Library’s analysis of marginality in the 2019 general election and marginality in the 2024 general election, we compared seat marginality with the percentage of the spending limit used by candidates. Although it might be expected that candidates were more likely to spend to the limit in closer races, there was no real trend or link between these two variables. This was also the case when comparing percentage of spending limit used and size of victory.

Party spending in the 2024 general election for those parties that spent over £250,000 has not yet been published.

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About the author: Sam Power is a Parliamentary Academic Fellow working in the Parliament and Constitution Centre in the House of Commons Library, and Lecturer in Politics at the University of Bristol.

Photo by: Descrier via Wikimedia Commons