Truro & Falmouth heads the 2015 candidate race
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I think it’s possible that 2015 could see a record number of candidates standing in a UK general election. UKIP are planning to stand in every seat and the Greens are aiming for up to 500. Anecdotally, it also looks like we could also be set for a huge number of independents putting up the £500 deposit. So, pretty much every seat in England will get a minimum of five runners, with Scottish and Welsh voters almost all guaranteed six choices.
The seat with the most candidates standing in 2010 was Luton South with twelve. That included the disastrous candidature of Esther Rantzen who, despite being backed in to 6/1, could only manage a paltry 4% of the vote: A warning sign for hopeful Independents everywhere.
Amazingly, we already have one seat with eight declared candidates for 2015: Truro & Falmouth:
A fascinating contest even without all of the extra candidates; we rate it as the fourth most plausible Liberal Democrat gain in the country. For an excellent round up of the runners and riders in this seat as well as the other five in Cornwall, check out Bernard Deacon’s blog.
Truro still has a long way to go to catch the all time record of fifteen candidates who stood in Tony Blair’s Sedgefield constituency in 2005.
