2021 Elections Report

We’ve published our report on the 2021 elections.

What we did in May

The May elections were quite an experience - with so much happening in so many different places all at once, it was difficult to keep track of each of our individual projects. Our fantastic team really rose to the challenge, and, like a certain steeplechase runner, smashed all our previous records.

Specifically, we:

• Achieved a substantial increase in our polling station finder coverage, including all areas in Scotland, Wales, and Greater London.
• Retained and expanded our high levels of engagement with local government - over 90% of councils provided data, and over 50% embedded our widget/promoted WhereDoIVote.co.uk.
• Successfully implemented a significant redesign of WhoCanIVoteFor.co.uk, leading to a fourteen point increase in user satisfaction.
• Added Welsh language capability to WhereDoIVote.co.uk.
• Processed two million postcode searches in election week.
• Saw a substantial increase in users of WhoCanIVoteFor.co.uk and our widgets.
• Secured excellent partnerships with London Elects and Reach PLC’s InYourArea.
• Increased our media footprint, especially through our work with the Fawcett Society.

It wasn’t quite all plain sailing, however… but you’ll need to read the full report to find out why!

Giving the people what they want

We’re especially pleased with the fantastic increase in user satisfaction on WhoCanIVoteFor.co.uk: 67% of users found what they were looking for after visiting the site in the final election week.

It’s worth taking a moment to look back at how far we’ve come. When Democracy Club started tracking user satisfaction back in 2018, a mere 29% of WCIVF users were pleased with their experience (by contrast, WDIV satisfaction rates are always high, largely because we only ask the people we can actually provide a polling station to!). These ratings have advanced steadily over the last four elections.

Proportion of people answering ‘yes’ to the question ‘did you find what you were looking for?’, 2018-2021. Reporting period for each election is 00:00 Monday to 22:00 Thursday (close of poll).

There’s still an awful lot more we want to develop over the coming year, but it’s great to know we’re heading in the right direction.

Sheffield and the future

At the end of June, the whole team travelled to the lovely city of Sheffield for our first ever in person meeting. We used this time to review the election just passed, set out our plans for the coming year, and admire the trams.

One outcome of these discussions was the decision to hire a Chief Operating Officer. Now we’ve got extra developer capacity and some ambitious plans, we’re in need of someone to help oversee this work, especially as regards the fundraising side of things.

Sound like your sort of thing? You can find the full job description and link to the application form on our jobs page.

What else?

We may have not blogged for a while, but that doesn’t mean we’ve not been busy! As you have probably noticed, we’ve applied the design system to our company website (that is, this one!). At present we’ve not changed any of the content, but we’ve a lot of restructuring and new content planned for the coming weeks and months, so keep your eyes peeled.

In addition to this development work, we’ve also spent the last couple of months writing up our report on the May 2021 elections and planning for the future - most obviously in the form of a new addition to the team.

What do you think?

Lastly, we’ve put together a short questionnaire to gather information on how people use our websites and services. We’d really appreciate it if you could take the time to let us know what you think of our work!

You can complete the survey here.

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Image: a tram in Sheffield. Source