4 visualisations on the UK General Election

Today we publish a series of interactive visualisations from the Political Futures Tracker that answer four key questions about the UK General Election and uncover the themes that will define tomorrow's vote.

1) What are the big issues for UK regions?

This visualisation allows you to see the distribution of candidates tweets for the ten most discussed topics from the dissolution of Parliament on the 30th of March until yesterday (5th May). By looking at what constituencies candidates are based in we can build up a regional picture of the top themes across the UK.

We see a strong pattern of London centric Twitter use by politicians, where candidates based in London and the South East show a greater proclivity to Tweet about top themes. This trend is bucked by Wales, and Tax and revenue - where Welsh candidates are overwhelimingly vocal about the nation they are based in, and for Tax and revenue - distribution of tweets is more evenly spread.

2) What are the top party issues?

This visualisation allows interactive exploration the top ten themes and related topics being discussed on Twitter by the different political parties. The data used covers the period from the dissolution of Parliament on the 30th of March until yesterday (5th May). It shows data for each party, which you can chose from the drop down list. Click on the Twitter logo for tweet examples.

3) What are the top election #hashtags?

The frequency of use of hashtags on Twitter, when presented visually allows a quick insight into the topics being discussed. This example shows the main topics of discussion that occurred between 8pm and 9:30pm on the 16th of April during the #BBCdebate, hosted by David Dimbleby, featuring the leaders of the five main opposition parties.

4) How do people feel about top election issues?

This visualisation allows you to quickly see the top topics being discussed by the public on Twitter and the sentiment being expressed regarding each topic. The data used in this example covers the period between 8pm and 10pm on the 2nd of April and shows the main topics and related sentiment of discussion on Twitter that was generated by the #Leadersdebate, hosted by ITV, between the leaders of the seven main political parties.

We will be conducting analysis throughout the final throes of the UK General Election campaign using the Political Futures Tracker. Stay tuned for the latest analysis and lessons learnt for future government over the coming weeks.

Author

George Windsor

George Windsor

George Windsor

Senior Policy Researcher

George was a Senior Policy Researcher in the Creative and Digital Economy team.

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Dr Mark A Greenwood

Dr Greenwood is a Research Associate in the Natural Language Processing Group at the University of Sheffield.