On Malle's conjecture for nilpotent groups, I

We develop an abstract framework for studying the strong form of Malle's conjecture for nilpotent groups $G$ in their regular representation. This framework is then used to prove the strong form of Malle's conjecture for any nilpotent group $G$ such that all elements of order $p$ are central, where $p$ is the smallest prime divisor of $\# G$. We also give an upper bound for any nilpotent group $G$ tight up to logarithmic factors, and tight up to a constant factor in case all elements of order $p$ pairwise commute. Finally, we give a new heuristical argument supporting Malle's conjecture in the case of nilpotent groups in their regular representation.