We’ve analysed every vote since the general election, and why that’s good news for you

360 degree panorama by Eye of QvoxSince the 2010 election, there have been 1,085 votes in the House of Commons.

Our team member Richard has now analysed every single one of those votes, and his findings have been added to each MP’s information on TheyWorkForYou.

We hope that’s great news for users: it means that we can now present a really full picture of how your MP voted on key topics.

It’s also potentially useful for developers, eDemocracy hackers and campaign groups, who can pick up our data and use it as they please.

So what exactly is the data?

Often MPs vote on motions which are, at first glance, rather incomprehensible and cryptic. They might vote for example on a motion to accept:

Amendments (a) to (d) proposed in lieu of Lords amendments 1 to 4 and 6.

We’ve done the research to determine what MPs were actually voting on in each case, and turned their archaic language into plain English.

For every vote we’ve written a sentence to describe the effect of voting either “aye” or “no”. In relation to one MP’s vote on the evening of the 9th of July 2014 we write:

Mark Pawsey MP, Rugby voted for a residence test as an eligibility criteria for civil legal aid; subject to exceptions for refugees and those who have sought asylum.

In addition to describing every vote, we have decided whether it should be considered relevant to the topics we list on each MP’s page (see an example MP here, or check your own MP by inputting your postcode on the homepage, then clicking ‘voting record’ on your MP’s page).

If a vote was relevant to one of the statements we show on TheyWorkForYou, we then determined whether voting ‘aye’ or ‘no’ was a vote for or against the statement and if the vote was very important, or less important. By clicking on the green ‘details’ button beside each statement on an MP’s voting record you can see exactly which individual votes contributed to it as well as how we calculated which wording such as “moderately for” or “strongly against” to apply in each case.

Matters MPs have voted on since the 2010 general election have ranged from bankers’ bonuses to same sex marriage; from food banks to the “bedroom tax” (all of which have contributed to statements we show on TheyWorkForYou); from daylight saving to the regulation of hairdressers (neither included) – and plenty more. (We’ve written previously about how we select which topics to show on TheyWorkForYou.)

Of course, Parliament continues to hold votes, and we’ll be continuing to analyse the results as they come in – but it is good to know that we are bang up to date.

How can this data be used?

We have plenty of ideas ourselves, and we want to hear yours, too. With the forthcoming general election, one obvious use is for ‘who should I vote for?’ tools, which match users’ opinions with those of each party.

There’s also potential for comparisons between what constituents believe and what their elected representative has voted for.

No doubt there are many other ideas that haven’t even occurred to us yet – please do get in touch if you have ideas and you’d like to use this data.

Image: Eye of Qvox (cc)

 

3 Comments

  1. Great stuff!

    Is it possible to get the raw data?

    And, where can we see an example of the new votes?

    • The newly described votes are behind the statements made on each MP’s page on TheyWorkForYou under “Voting Summary” and on the more detailed “Voting Record” page. Clicking the “Details” button takes you to PublicWhip.org.uk for more information on the individual votes.

      The data is available via:
      http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/project/data.php
      If the format of that puts you off do contact mySociety to discuss providing it in alternative ways.