Electoral Register

(asked on 12th April 2021) - View Source

Question

To ask the hon. Member for City of Chester, representing the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission, what recent estimate the Commission has made of the number of eligible people who are (a) not on the electoral register and (b) not registered correctly; and how the Commission calculated those estimates.


Answered by
Christian Matheson Portrait
Christian Matheson
This question was answered on 15th April 2021

The Commission carries out research studies on the accuracy and completeness of the electoral registers. These are based on an established, robust methodology involving house-to-house interviewing across the UK. The most recent study, published in 2019, found that 83% of people eligible to appear on a local government register in Great Britain were correctly registered.

The findings from this research can be used, with the Office for National Statistic's population estimates, to estimate that between 8.3 and 9.4 million people in Great Britain were not correctly registered. This estimate includes people not on a register, and people on a register but not at their current and therefore correct address. It is not possible, however, to provide a specific estimate for each category seperately.

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