In the Media

Each year, our voter information tools and elections data are used by a wide array of organisations, while our expertise is often drawn upon by journalists and researchers. Below are some of our favourite examples.

Our data has also been used in multiple House of Commons Library research briefings. For examples of this, please see our 2021 election report.

For summaries of press coverage during individual elections, please see the relevant election report.

To access the data yourself, please see our data and API pages.

• Data Journalism

  Wales Online (2022), 'Local elections 2022: The UK's most unusual polling stations'

  NationalWorld (2022), 'Local elections 2022: how many candidates by party, youngest and oldest, gender split and most common names'

  The Guardian (2021), '"Independents" day: the rise of hyperlocal political parties'

  The Times (2019), 'Who are the general election candidates in my area?'

  BBC News (2019), 'Council elections: 'Not enough' women and minorities stand'

• Partnerships

  In Your Area (2019), 'Local Elections 2019: Who you can vote for and where'

  Democratic Audit (2018), 'England’s local elections 2018: bridging the information gap with the Democratic Dashboard'

  The Electoral Commission (2017), 'Helping voters find out where to vote'

  Oxford City Council (2017), 'Collaboration not reinvention'

• Articles

  Nation.Cymru (2021), 'If we want young people to turn out for the Senedd vote we must make it an election fit for digital natives'

  TBD (2017), 'How Technology Can Disrupt Democracy'

  The Guardian(2017), 'Democracy? There's an app for that - the tech upstarts trying to 'hack' British politics'

• Candidate gender analysis

  The Scotsman (2022), 'Council elections Scotland: Only 33% of candidates running for May local elections are female'

  The Times (2022), 'Local election analysis says the typical candidate is a 47-year-old man called David'

  Fawcett Society (2021), 'New data shows only a third of local election candidates are women'

  Fawcett Society (2019), 'Lack of women candidates in local elections "puts councils behind the times"'

  The Daily Telegraph (2017)'General election 2017 sees record level of female candidates'

• Reports

  Alex Parsons & Anna Powell-Smith (2023), 'Unlocking the Value of Fragmented Public Data' (mySociety and the Centre for Public Data)

  Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (2022), 'The Work of the Electoral Commission'

  House of Lords Democracy and Digital Technologies Select Committee (2020), 'Digital Technology and the Resurrection of Trust'

  Flavio Grazian & Hendrik Nahr (2020), 'Next Level Participation: Citizen-Driven E-Democracy Tools' [PDF] (European Liberal Forum)

• Academic Research

  Owen Winter (2022), 'Did progressive electoral cooperation disproportionately hurt the Conservatives in the 2022 English local elections?', LSE British Politics and Policy

  James Weinberg (2020), 'Emotional labour and occupational wellbeing in political office', The British Journal of Politics and International Relations

  Genevieve Gorrell et. al. (2020), 'Which politicians Receive abuse? Four factors illuminated in the UK general election 2019', EPJ Data Science

  James Weinberg (2020), 'Who Wants To Be a Politician? Basic Human Values and Candidate Emergence in the United Kingdom', British Journal of Political Science

  Caitlin Milazzo & Joshua Townsley (2020), 'Conceived in Harlesden: Candidate-Centred Campaigning in British General Elections', Parliamentary Affairs