2024 postcode search summary
Must…compile…numbers…
Everywhere in England and Wales had an election on 2 May. We had polling station information for every council in those two nations, the first time we’ve ever managed this for England (that’s 35,000 stations…or is it perhaps 27,000?).
Once again our data was used by the Electoral Commission and the BBC.
The numbers
Between 00:00 Monday, 29 April, and 22:00 Thursday 2 May, our elections database processed 2,285,279 postcode searches from the UK public. Of these, 95% were from England and 4% from Wales. This is the most postcode searches we’ve ever received for a UK local election week.
Between 1 April and 2 May, we processed over five million postcode searches.
View postcode searches by local authority here.
Users
Our elections database is available as an API and is used by a range of other organisations. We also offer an embeddable widget which anyone can add to their own website. Below are the main services which use our data, and the proportion of searches served by each.
| User | Proportion of searches |
|---|---|
| Electoral Commission | 24% |
| WhoCanIVoteFor | 23% |
| WhereDoIVote | 21% |
| BBC News | 16% |
| Other API users | 7% |
| Widgets | 4% |
☺ Happy users
We’ll have a full user feedback breakdown in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, here are some feedback responses from voters shamelessly cherry-picked to be as positive as possible:
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“In 2 minutes I found exactly the resource I was looking for: where is my polling station? What do I need to bring to vote? Simple and easy, keep up the good work.”
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“Just what I needed to know, thank you for your help.”
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“Without the information telling me where I can vote, I would be unable to vote, as I would not know where to go. Therefore, this information has enabled me to vote.”
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“All the information and also inclusive with help on voting with impairment”
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“Would never miss a vote, this has made it much easier for us to find the station”