380 Conservative candidates go missing

And then they were mostly found again; thanks to the person who pointed out the reason for the bulk of the difference in the comments on Lib Dem Voice. I think the few who are still missing are best not fussed over…! You should therefore ignore what follows as it’s all wrong…

A little while back the Conservatives boasted about the number of candidates they were standing in the local elections. This story is no longer on their website though thanks to Iain Dale we can all still read the numbers.

Why might you want to read the numbers? Well, the (independent) Press Association has now added up the number of candidates from each party and the Conservative total in England is actually 380 fewer than they claimed (8,884 compared with 9,264).

Oops.

P.S. If this was the Liberal Democrats, I am sure you can imagine the frothing at the mouth indignation on Conservative blogs about lies, dodgy statistics, gutter politics, shoddy cover-ups and predictable mud-slinging. But I’m a nice chap, so I won’t froth. But feel free to froth on your own.

P.P.S. Boring technical bits: some variation in the figures is to be expected because of some late withdrawals that may have happened after the Conservative figures were published and, having double-checked the breakdown of the figures, I am comparing England with England. It’s not a matter of one set including Scotland and the other not.