| name | dc-candidates |
| description | Query DemocracyClub Candidates — the canonical list of UK electoral candidates (past, present, declared) with stable IDs, party affiliations, and sources. Use when the question is who stood (or is standing) for a seat at a given election, what the candidate's history is across seats, or to enumerate every candidate at a given general election. Joins to Parliament via Westminster constituency name + general-election date. Free JSON API; no auth. |
| license | Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (DemocracyClub) |
| metadata | {"facility":"dc-candidates","cli-alias":"candidates","base-url":"https://candidates.democracyclub.org.uk/api/next","provenance":{"tier":3,"operator":"DemocracyClub","service":"candidates.democracyclub.org.uk","upstream-data":"Crowd-sourced and party-supplied candidate data, fact-checked by DC volunteers","citation-short":"via DemocracyClub Candidates","citation-formal":"DemocracyClub Candidates database, retrieved {date}, CC BY-SA 4.0","confidence":"derived","confidence-notes":"Crowd-sourced with strong sourcing discipline. Each statement on a person record carries a `source_url`. Recent / declared candidates are well-covered; pre-2015 has gaps."}} |
DemocracyClub Candidates
Base URL: https://candidates.democracyclub.org.uk/api/next/
Core resources
| Resource | What it is |
|---|
| ballot | One election × one electoral area — e.g. "Holborn and St Pancras, 2024 general election". Has a ballot_paper_id like parl.holborn-and-st-pancras.2024-07-04. |
| person | One candidate identity, persistent across the elections they've contested. DC person id is the canonical key. |
| election | The umbrella event (e.g. parl.2024-07-04 general election). |
| post | The electoral area (e.g. "Holborn and St Pancras"). |
| party | A registered party as DC records it. |
CLI
parl candidates ballots --election-date 2024-07-04 --take 5
parl candidates ballot parl.holborn-and-st-pancras.2024-07-04
parl candidates persons --name "Cooper"
parl candidates person 1196
parl candidates elections --election-date 2024-07-04
parl candidates parties
Joins to Parliament
- DC ballot
post.label ≈ Westminster constituency name
- The winner's
person.id doesn't directly equal a Parliament
member id, but you can name-match via
parl members search --name "<full name>" (same chain as APPG).
- For canonical cross-IDs, prefer the
wikidata
bridge (Wikidata has P3640 = DemocracyClub person id, P5388 =
Parliament MP id).
Provenance to cite
Tier 3 — third-party (DemocracyClub).
- Inline cite: "(via DemocracyClub Candidates)" — once per
paragraph.
- Each DC
person record has versions[] showing the edit history
and source_url for each change. For a high-stakes statement,
cite the underlying source URL on the version that established it,
not just DC.
- Pre-2015 coverage is patchy.
- See
../../docs/provenance.md.
