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It also doesn't impact very much outside of multi-member elections at council level. Some interesting regional quirks though

Haha, best laid plans and all that. But "B" names did even better than "A" names according to this data, so. Tbh I think you just need to change to electing in thirds like sensible councils do, makes most of these issues go away 🙂 (until there are boundary changes and then it's just 😬 )

Also been a notable trend in Irish elections since independence: mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/38304/1/MPRA...

Ha! In light of the performance of both E and L I am withdrawing from politics 😉.

This has been one of our favourite sections you've written so far!

I know this personally: I was running with a candidate whose surname started with A. I had S, and I was third from the bottom of the list of 14, if I remember right, and got about 200 fewer votes. 

Aah thank you for doing this! I’ve been wanting to look at this for ages but never found the time.

Binface strategy.

Would be curious to break this down by political party though to see if it breaks through divides or did one party overload on A-C while UKIP had a lot of Zs

This is why we need to get rid of systems where multiple people are elected non proportionally

You mean I have to read right to the bottom of the list?

Yeah - it's when the alphabet doesn't dictate order that you have to take notice

There may be other factors why surnames starting with Z are less successful.

Could this be a side effect of voters misunderstanding how to vote in multi seat wards and a proportion of them only voting for one candidate, reading down the paper until they find their preferred party?

Aaron Aardvark for parliament!