Candidates / political parties standing for election always get a copy of the full electoral register (for the relevant constituency). This is statutory legislation – you can't stop your local electoral registration office passing your name and address to all candidates / parties standing in your constituency. The relevant piece of legislation is regulation 47 of the Representation of the People Act.

Candidates and parties may use the electoral for "electoral purposes", which is defined as anything to do with the process of campaigning and getting elected – so that includes using the register as a junk mail list. However, they're still required to process your personal data in accordance with the Data Protection Act. That means you can send candidates and parties a data protection notice to prevent they will send you addressed junk mail.

Unaddressed political junk mail is a bit of a grey area:

• Households that are registered with Royal Mail's Door-to-Door Opt-Out should get no party-political junk mail, apart from a single "election communication" from every candidate in your constituency.
• The Your Choice scheme should stop all political junk mail – though it's unlikely any leaflets you get are distributed by members of the Direct Marketing Association.
• Letterbox stickers don't usually prevent political junk mail; the literature is usually seen as "non-commercial" or even as "contributing to the democratic process" and therefore outside the definition of "junk mail". Although there's no official definition of "junk mail" this seems a reasonable approach.

The best way to prevent leaflets from political parties is to either put a notice on your door along the lines of "No political leaflets" or by contacting the parties directly. Both are purely informal measures but you'll probably find it will work – political parties are usually keen to avoid a junk mail row.