Here's a very silly idea. Can we use the number of followers each candidate has to predict who will win the election? No, probably not - but let's give it a try anyway, eh? Hypothesis Support on Twitter - as measured by the number of followers - is a reasonable predictor of electoral success. It is likely that the incumbent MP will have a large number of followers - having been in the public eye for five years and (possibly) being on Twitter that long. It is also likely that MPs with…
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While on the anti-Digital-Economy-Bill protest, I bumped into Denny de la Haye. I've known Denny virtually for a while - and he's commented on this blog a number of times. Denny is standing for parliament in Hackney South and Shoreditch. He is standing on a platform of Direct Digital Democracy. If he is elected, he will run an online poll for his constituents. Whichever way they vote, he votes. Why This Is a Dumb Idea The wisdom of the crowds relies on an informed crowd. Asking pe…
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After the tragic death of Ernest Marples, I'm sorry to say that the site fell in to a bit of disrepair. With no postcode data and no new boundary data, it looked like VoteUK was going to be permanantly out of business. Thanks - once again - to the clever-clogs at TheyWorkForYou, at least half of the problem has been solved. The API call getConstituency now has a future parameter. Adding future=1 to the call will return the constituency the Postcode will be in for the 2010 General Election. …
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As you may recall from previous instalments of my thrilling blog, I'm trying to find the location of every polling station in the UK. This is proving to be rather tricky - if not impossible. The data aren't centrally held and, in any case, polling stations aren't announced until an election is called. So I went for the next best thing. Using the wonderful What Do They Know site to make a Freedom of Information Act request, I asked the Electoral Commission for details of every council and wh…
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It has always depressed me how little the British make of elections. We don't have voter registration drive, "Kiss me; I've voted" badges" or much in the way of celebrating our democracy. Perhaps it's our reserved nature. But I think it has a direct effect on the declining number of people voting. We're going to have a General Election within a year - how do we encourage people to register and then vote? I want to create a dual-aim mobile site. How do I register to vote? Enter…
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