2,087,285 postcode searches

This is no time to rest, there’s interminable media analysis of the Hartlepool by-election to catch up on.

So, how did we do?

As we announced yesterday, this year we had the best data coverage ever on the polling station finder. With 90% of councils sending us data, we were able to provide a polling station address to a higher proportion of postcode searches than ever before. Here are the stats!

📈 Number go up 📈

Between midnight on Monday morning and 10pm Thursday evening, our database processed 2,087,285 postcode searches. This includes searches received via the website of the Electoral Commission and other partners. Half of these searches occurred on polling day itself.

For comparison, both the 2019 local and EU elections saw around one million searches each, so we’ve effectively doubled our userbase.

The vast majority of these searches were via our API, because the social media giants linked to the Electoral Commission website rather than WhereDoIVote.co.uk. This meant that, for the first time ever, WhoCanIVotefor.co.uk experienced far more users than its sister website. WDIV saw 377,000 users this week, compared with 650,000 for WCIVF.

In terms of data quality, we were able to show a polling station for 1,815,987 searches (87% of searches). This is consistent with our coverage of 336 local authorities (90.5%).

We’ll have a full analysis in our report in a few weeks’ time.

Obligatory graph of visitor numbers (WhoCanIVoteFor.co.uk)

😍 Happy users 😊

We had some pretty excellent user feedback during the day too. Here’s some from WhereDoIVote.co.uk.

• “Very useful advice where to go and what is needed when going to vote. Great service.”
• “Used a couple of time at Polling Station to advise where they vote when they’ve come to ours in error”
• “No information arrived with poll card and venue changed to a school very helpful information Thank You”

We’ll have a proper breakdown of the feedback soon.

🤝 Thanks! 🙌

Lastly, we must say an enormous thanks to all those who helped make this election such a success: the electoral services staff, the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators, London Elects, Reach PLC’s In Your Area, and, of course, our phenomenal volunteers. Same time next year, yeah?

Now to find out who won!

WhereDoIVote.co.uk coverage on 6 May 2021. Map made using Flourish

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