Effectiveness of the canvass
Changes to the annual canvass were to allow Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) to focus on contacting households that have likely changed since the previous canvass. At the beginning of the canvass, all registers are matched against Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) data. We are using two factors to determine the effectiveness of the canvass: the accuracy of the DWP data matching and the number of households that responded.
Route allocations
The results of the data matching step are used by EROs to allocate properties to ‘routes’. This determines how many times the ERO will contact a household to attempt to get a response. In Route 1, households get fewer contacts. In Route 2, they are contacted more times. EROs can choose to match the data to local data, such as council tax records or student databases.
In 2025, the majority of EROs carried out local data matching. As in previous years, council tax records were the most popular datasets used.
The local data matching step had a significant impact on the number of households allocated to each route.
How different routes are allocated
- The ERO places properties in Route 1 if the household's entries match with other data, such as DWP data.
- This assumes that the entries for that household remain the same from the last canvass.
- The ERO will contact Route 1 households to invite them to provide information on any changes. Where there are no changes to report, the household is not required to respond.
- The ERO places properties in Route 2 if the household's entries do not match with other data, such as DWP data.
- This assumes that the entries for that household have changed since the last canvass.
- Route 2 households must respond to requests for information, even if their information has not changed.
- The ERO places properties in Route 3 if they think they can get information on the people living there from a ‘single responsible person’. For example, care homes or student halls.
- If the ERO can't get the information from the ‘single responsible person’, the property is placed into Route 2.
Household response rates per route
The response rate is higher among Route 2 households than Route 1 households. We usually see around a quarter of Route 1 households responding, compared to roughly 3 in 5 Route 2 households. In 2025:
- 29.2% of Route 1 households responded
- 61.6% of Route 2 households responded
We expect to see this difference as Route 2 households are likely to have changes they need to report. They also receive more communications to encourage responses.
The number of responses to the canvass has fallen since the canvass process changed. Having more households in Route 1 will have resulted in lowered response rates. Route 1 households do not need to respond unless they need to report a change to who is living in their household.
However, Route 2 response rates have gradually declined in Great Britain since 2021. There is a risk that, over time, if response rates continue to fall there will be an impact on the completeness and accuracy of the registers.
Route 2 response rate
Route 2 responses are consistently lower in Scotland and Wales
Historically, Scotland consistently has a lower Route 2 response rate than England and Wales. Since 2023, the Route 2 response rate in Wales has also declined and is now significantly lower than England’s.
Route 2 response rates by nation
Registers are likely not keeping up with changes in electors’ details
The number of responses from Route 2 households falling might be a sign that people are being missed by the electoral registration system. We can see this in the way that electoral registration has not kept up with population growth.
The introduction of Individual Electoral Registration (IER) in 2014 and the reformed canvass in 2020 notably slowed the growth of the electoral registers compared to the general population.
Index of the UK local government electorate and 17+ population
The data matching process allocating households to ‘routes’ is not perfect
Responding households can record:
- a major change (e.g. reporting that a potential new elector is resident)
- a minor change (e.g. amending the name of an existing elector)
- no change (i.e. confirming the existing details of household members)
By looking at the types of responses received, we can get an idea of how accurate the data matching process is. Since the introduction of the reformed canvass in 2020, the proportion of major changes that come from Route 1 households has been slowly but steadily increasing. These are households that EROs did not expect major changes from.
In 2020, under a third of major changes came from Route 1s. In 2025, this was 37%. This means that of the 2.5 million households that required a major change to the electoral register, just under a million of them came from properties were no change was expected.
Distribution of major changes across routes
It is also important to note that it is unlikely that all the Route 1 households that may have needed to report a major change will have done so. Particularly as they would have received limited contact from the ERO.