British Political Surnames
The most popular surnames of candidates standing for local or national elections in Great Britain.
The coloured symbols against each name show whether that surname is more popular as a political name than it is in the general population, or less. For example, Smith is the most common surname among politicians just as it is in the population as a whole. But there are proportionately more Smiths in the Conservatives than in the population as a whole, while on the other hand Labour has proportionately fewer Smiths.
All Politicians
- Smith
- Jones
- Williams
- Davies
- Brown
- Taylor
- Thomas
- Evans
- Wilson
- Johnson
- Roberts
- Hughes
- Martin
- Wright
- Walker
- Clarke
- Thompson
- Green
- Khan
- Edwards
- White
- Wood
- Lewis
- Clark
- Robinson
- Hall
- Turner
- Morgan
- Harris
- James
- Cooper
- Jackson
- Watson
- Morris
- Scott
- Allen
- Baker
- Hussain
- King
- Moore
- Bell
- Harrison
- Ali
- Hill
- Young
- Ward
- Griffiths
- Phillips
- Ahmed
- Davis
Labour
Conservative
Reform
SNP
Most over-represented surnames
Another way of looking at it is to see which surnames are over-represented - that is, surnames which appear far more frequently among politicians than they do in the population as a whole.
These are the surnames that are most over-represented in politics, both overall and for the three main parties. The smaller parties aren't included in this comparison because they don't have enough candidates to generate meaningful statistics.
All Politicians
Labour
Conservative
Most and least successsful political surnames
Finally, we can also look at the surnames of candidates and see which are the most likely to win. These lists show the best and worst win percentages of surnames.
Most Successful
| Surname | Elections Contested | Elections Won | Win Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lay | 22 | 17 | 77.3% |
| Seaton | 19 | 13 | 68.4% |
| Daley | 22 | 15 | 68.2% |
| Rush | 23 | 15 | 65.2% |
| Tinsley | 17 | 11 | 64.7% |
| Clancy | 14 | 9 | 64.3% |
| Wray | 19 | 12 | 63.2% |
| Barclay | 16 | 10 | 62.5% |
| Bowden | 29 | 18 | 62.1% |
| Molyneux | 18 | 11 | 61.1% |
| Glen | 18 | 11 | 61.1% |
| Upton | 23 | 14 | 60.9% |
| Grewal | 20 | 12 | 60% |
| Eyre | 19 | 11 | 57.9% |
| Drummond | 26 | 15 | 57.7% |
| Fairclough | 14 | 8 | 57.1% |
| Bedford | 35 | 20 | 57.1% |
| Lancaster | 35 | 20 | 57.1% |
| McCartney | 30 | 17 | 56.7% |
| Hillier | 23 | 13 | 56.5% |
Least Successful
| Surname | Elections Contested | Elections Won | Win Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bamber | 18 | 0 | 0% |
| Wilde | 16 | 0 | 0% |
| Hillman | 16 | 0 | 0% |
| Marchant | 18 | 0 | 0% |
| Southall | 34 | 0 | 0% |
| Cottrell | 18 | 0 | 0% |
| Olsen | 28 | 0 | 0% |
| Waterhouse | 20 | 0 | 0% |
| Telford | 14 | 0 | 0% |
| Buxton | 46 | 1 | 2.2% |
| Bliss | 29 | 1 | 3.5% |
| Royle | 28 | 1 | 3.6% |
| Wilcock | 26 | 1 | 3.9% |
| Emmerson | 26 | 1 | 3.9% |
| Dickens | 25 | 1 | 4% |
| Gilmore | 25 | 1 | 4% |
| Felton | 22 | 1 | 4.6% |
| Rosser | 22 | 1 | 4.6% |
| Ralph | 21 | 1 | 4.8% |
| Cobb | 21 | 1 | 4.8% |
And, if you were wondering whether it's true that having a surname closer to the start of the alphbet is an advantage on the ballot paper, the answer appears to be that it does help, but the margin is very small. Here's a graph of win percentage broken down by the first letter of each candidate surname.
Apart from Q and X, which are slight oddities possibly caused by a smaller sample set for these letters, there is a slight, but clearly visible, downward trend from left to right - that is, from A to Z. So, statistically, it does seem to help a bit to have a surname towards the top of the ballot paper.
Credits
The politician names used for this data come from the candidate database published by Democracy Club. The database covers parliamentary and local elections going back to 2010.
Candidate and election data is updated monthly, so it may not take account of recent elections and by-elections.
This data is used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) licence.