Electoral administration at the 2024 UK general election

Following our 2023 study into the administration of voter identification, we once again surveyed electoral administrators in 2024 after the general election in July. Both studies asked electoral administrators to rate how much of a problem for electoral integrity a series of different features of the electoral process are.

There were several notable differences this year compared to the results after the May 2023 local elections (which only covered England):

• Recruiting polling station staff was said to be an issue by nearly 90% of respondents in 2023, but this reduced to 72% in 2024, still a major issue across the UK. The lower figure might be explained by the difference in relative levels of interest for a local versus general election, which may have reduced pressures on polling station staff recruitment.
• Voter turnout was considered to be a problem by over 80% of respondents in 2023, as opposed to 68% after the 2024 general election. Again, this could be explained by the different election dynamics – local elections have much lower turnout than general elections in nearly all cases.
• Our general election research highlights troubling aspects of the way elections work. Eighty seven per cent of administrators said that getting postal votes to electors on time was a problem, reflecting news stories that emphasised this issue. We will discuss the drivers of this issue later in the paper, but for now it is worth noting that almost 90% of administrators believed this to be an issue.
• A new question on intimidation/abuse/harassment of electoral services staff found that around 44% of administrators consider this to be a problem. This is a serious development, and highlights an issue that has been severely underexplored in previous research.

The results of the new survey demonstrate again the extent to which elections depend on the good will and hard work of tiny groups of dedicated staff. As part of the critical infrastructure of the United Kingdom, the resilience of our electoral processes should not be on such a shaky footing. The foundations of UK democracy need to be strengthened.