theyworkforyou
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mysociety
User suggestion: Aggregate MP votes into party voting record
From a user:
Can you please provide data on the voting record of each party? I am surprised that this is not already on your site, and it would be an invaluable source of information to use, particularly in the run up to elections.
+1 – this would be super useful right now for finding out about how DUP tend to vote.
A mockup by @tmtmtmtm at
http://ukvotes.herokuapp.com/compare/con/dup
shows a comparison which would be of current interest.
There's some discussion about carefully wording statements about a "party voting record" at
https://github.com/mysociety/theyworkforyou/issues/576#issuecomment-59290104
User email:
How can I find out how one party or another has predominately voted on each policy so that I can draw conclusions and form a general opinion as to the consensus.
Most of the code to do this is written:
https://github.com/mysociety/theyworkforyou/tree/issues/905-party-votes
Further thoughts from the same user:
It's just a pity that your site doesn't run that feature after all its probably all just algorithmically generated and would round off your service so that instead of just being a reflection of micro local issues you would also get the macro bigger partywide position. From my point of view if i can show the electorate that one party that they vote for is consistently voting against their interests it is an invaluable tool, whereas one MP can be replaced and allows an ideologically driven voter to disengage that MP from the party he belongs to. I believe there is a general malaise in politics precisely because people are not able to see how destructive their entrenched political views are and it is the bigger picture that will enable change. You could for instance post on social media each month voting statistics by party and take 10 or 20 key policies and show people graphically how each party voted. if most people scarcely read beyond the headline of an article, rather than dumbing down, wouldn't this be an adjuct to engage people visually.
User email request:
I would like to see a page summarising votes in the same way as for individual MPs, but with the votes collated for a whole party. This would allow you to see how each party is generally voting on each issue, rather than just an individual MP.
I wondered if there is a way of seeing the data in reverse. In other words, rather than seeing how a specific MP voted on a range of subjects, can we see how all (or a range) of MPs voted on a specific subject? In particular, I think it would be interesting to be able to group the MPs by party, to see how a party collectively voted on an issue.
I find the information that you provide on individual mps' voting records to be very useful. I am surprised that you do not provide information on voting records of political parties, as this would be exceptionally useful and would make your website even more popular and I expect oft-quoted by journalists.
