The 2015 General Election: London Results

The perennially excellent London DataStore has published comprehensive, accessible and usable data on the 2015 General Election. So, naturally, I had to make some maps of it. There probably isn't anything about this election that hasn't been mapped but since my last blog was a General Election piece I thought I'd do a little follow-up, with not a hexagon in sight. There have been quite a few 'who came second' maps but not many which include third and fourth places. I'm particularly interested in London because it's something of an exception in the South East of England and, well, I just wanted to make some maps. Below you'll see maps for who came first, second, third and fourth. The last map has the constituency names. I resisted the temptation to do a 'who came eleventh' map, but, since you asked, there were only four constituencies where there were at least 11 candidates, and the parties included the Whig Party. They might have been quite prominent had these maps been made in 1830 (incidentally, there were 658 constituencies in the UK then, which only had 24 million people).

'That's Blockbusters' - for Labour

UKIP emerge and Tories dominate second place

UKIP by far the most in third place - Greens emerge

No place for three 'main' parties here

Just in case you don't know all constituencies off by heart

You should be able to see pretty big versions of the maps if you click on them and then open them in a new tab/window. I've dispensed with the usual boring map legend and instead turned it into a 'bargend' (a portmanteau I just invented). I hope you find these interesting. 

Final nugget: the Whig Party came 9th in Bethnal Green and Bow (their best result) with 203 votes for my namesake, Alasdair Henderson.

Can Google search data predict an election victory?

Today seems like a good day to write a little blog post on what search data can and cannot tell us. Why? Because of the story below, which has been on the front page of the MailOnline for much of the day. This is just the way news works, but I thought it would be useful to give a bit more information here. The story behind the story goes something like this...

Simon Rogers, datajournalist and Data Editor at Google in San Francisco, got in touch some time in April to ask if I could help him map party leader search patterns by constituency. I'd been doing a lot of work with search data for housing markets anyway so this seemed like an interesting idea. We took search data for all points that were geocoded (there were about 5,000 total across the UK) and then produced a constituency version for all 650 seats. The final constituency results matched very closely the proportions for the individual places. The data are for the previous 12 months. 

MailOnline front page 07/05/15

The big question is what this all means. Do I think, as the MailOnline suggest, that 'Google Search tips Cameron to win election'? No. Do I think it disproves it? No. Do I think the large volume of search for Nigel Farage indicates his level of popularity across the country? Again, no. However, it could indicate that people are more likely to show interest in UKIP in an environment when nobody else is watching or listening. But we don't know. Does this prove that Miliband will come third? Definitely not. The map merely indicates who was the most searched for party leader in each constituency. The intent and sentiments of individual users are not known. In my own research in housing market analysis I've tackled this by doing interviews with website users but since this data is from Google they could of course add in other terms which people might combine with party leader names (some more favourable than others!). 

Kate Newton from Bing also got in touch to say they had worked on something similar (though much more sophisticated) in relation to the Scottish Independence referendum last year. More widely, there is a body of emerging research (including my own) which looks at search patterns and subsequent activity - mostly in the field of economics. The results suggest that search can be analysed meaningfully to predict future activity. But that's not what the party leader piece was about - not from my perspective. Thankfully, other media outlets were more measured in their analysis - such as BuzzFeed UK, The Scotsman,  and The Telegraph. 

MailOnline story 07/05/15

What's most interesting to me? Well, I'm most interested to see how the search patterns relate to outcomes in key marginals. I suspect there will not be much of a pattern but if there is it will be interesting to attempt to take this little piece of work further - perhaps for the US 2016 election. Other than that, this is an interesting stocking filler on a day when the papers and TV crews are forbidden from reporting anything really substantial until the polls close at 10am. In the meantime, my favourite snippets from the search map...

David Cameron is the most searched for leader in his own constituency, but he's surrounded by a sea of purple, plus a blob of red and orange.

Witney - David Cameron's constituency

Perhaps a little predictably, there is a lot of search for UKIP in Kent but - strangely - it appears that in the constituency where Nigel Farage is standing (Thanet South) the party leader most searched for is Ed Miliband.

UKIP - lots of search in Kent, but not to much in Thanet South

The search results produce some interesting results. The image below is a good example. Natalie Bennett (Green Party) is the most searched for leader in Durham North West and next door in Durham North the leader (by search over the past 12 months) is Leanne Wood (Plaid Cymru). I suspect this was down to a localised spike in interest after the leaders' debates.

Durham - Green and Welsh Nationalist stronghold?

Other interesting nuggets to emerge were the way in which geographical patterns sometimes reflected the opposite of what you'd expect. The most obvious example was where Nicola Sturgeon (SNP and not standing in this election) was the most searched for party leader in several English constituencies, such as Chesterfield (below). Her excellent performance in the leaders' debates probably led to a spike in interest. Perhaps the SNP ought to consider putting up candidates in England too.

The SNP take Chesterfield? Not so fast.

A kind of similar situation to the SNP/Chesterfield example can be seen in the final image below, where Nigel Farage is the most searched for leader in Aberdeen North. This Scottish constituency has no UKIP candidate and, even if it did, they would be a long way away from the top party.

What's my prediction for the outcome of the election? The only prediction I'll make is that the results will look nothing like this map!

Interpreting political maps

I recently tweeted a couple of maps showing the 100 most and least deprived constituencies in England. I used the 2010 English Indices of Deprivation to calculate this, aggregating the data from smaller areas to parliamentary constituencies. The method is not perfect but on the whole the areas identified are either among the poorest or richest in England. There are 533 constituencies in England so the figure of 100 is roughly the 20% most and least deprived (18.76% to be more precise). I shaded the maps using red for Labour, blue for Conservative, Yellow for Liberal Democrats and so on. The most obvious thing about the maps is, of course, the fact that the most deprived map shows nearly all Labour constituencies and the least deprived shows almost all Conservative constituencies. Click the caption below the images to see interactive versions.

100 most deprived constituencies

100 least deprived constituencies

These kinds of maps often make a big impact and are shared widely but people tend to draw conclusions from the patterns they see that are not necessarily correct - and often conclusion which mirror pre-existing biases and perspectives. For example, some people see these maps and claim that voting Labour makes you poor or that only rich people vote Conservative. Some would even claim that this proves that Labour has failed the constituencies they serve. Opponents would argue that coalition cuts have merely deepened spatial inequalities and hit Labour-voting areas hardest. This is all a bit dramatic, but you don't have to search online long to find such views.

Other people might say that if you want to be richer you should vote Conservative. Other people would tell you not to be so simplistic and point to the way in which voting patterns are formed at the local level. Still others might point to the longstanding economic differences between north and south in England and say that this has something to do with it. Perhaps others will say that the Conservatives are the party of the rich and that Labour are the party for the poor. There are varying degrees of truth in all these views but the point I want to make here is that none of this can be proven just by looking at a political map.

For me, such maps are a starting point for a conversation about what these patterns might mean, whether they are a problem and what might be done about it, if anything. I'm not making these maps because I'm pro-Labour or pro-Conservative or because I think that they prove anything in particular but because I want to draw attention to the patterns and what they might mean. Finally, some observations from the maps...

• There are no Labour constituencies amongst the 100 least deprived in England.
• There are 2 Conservative constituencies amongst the 100 most deprived in England.
• Sheffield Hallam (Liberal Democrat, Nick Clegg) is amongst the 100 least deprived constituencies in England. 
• There are 5 Liberal Democrat constituencies amongst the 100 most deprived in England.
• There are 7 Liberal Democrat constituencies amongst the 100 least deprived in England.

It will be very interesting to see how these patterns change (if at all) after the General Election this year.