Which constituency has the most people going to work by bicycle? Which constituency in London has the most graduates? And which constituency has the highest rate of divorce? As the General Election campaigns get underway we’ve got a tool to help you find out more about the 650 constituencies that make up the UK.
Constituency Explorer is an online data visualisation tool that allows statistical comparisons at a Parliamentary constituency, regional and national level. The tool uniquely provides UK-wide interactive data for parliamentary constituencies to provide a fascinating insight into the make-up of these areas.
You can looks at data from each constituency on:
- Age
- Country of birth
- Languages
- Religion
- Ethnicity
- Health
- Housing tenure
- Cars
- Qualifications
- Industry & occupation
There are over 150 variables, including population, travel to work, qualifications, health, and much more. You can explore the data yourself using intuitive tabulation tools to analyse a chosen constituency relative to others in the nation, by region or by party of the MP after the latest General Election.
We made the tool in the run up to the 2015 General Election, in collaboration with Durham University and with support from the Economic and Social Research Council. Even though it’s now two years old much of the data used is from the last Census, so it remains the latest available.
How well do you know your constituency?
Use Constituency Explorer to find out about your own constituency or how it compares with other areas. Try it for yourself and then take our quiz.
What’s different about constituency geographies and statistics?
UK Parliamentary constituencies are a special geography. Their purpose is largely to elect Members of Parliament – 650 areas each with one MP. Constituencies are constructed so that each area has roughly the same number of eligible voters. For the most part constituencies do not conform to other administrative areas, such as district and county council areas. And as official statistics tend to be produced for these administrative areas, they are not always available for constituencies. Also, while Westminster’s parliamentary constituencies are UK-wide, official statistics are often devolved and in many cases published data may not cover the whole the UK.
We have long championed the production and use of official statistics for parliamentary constituency areas across the UK. We know that MPs, voters, journalists and those in education are interested in this data but its availability is often patchy. The desirability of parliamentary constituency data was supported by the The UKSA brief was updated in 2016 and recognised that, between 2012 and 2016, producers of Parliamentary statistics had responded to the recommendations of commentators and had implemented improvements to the coverage and consistency of parliamentary constituency data across the UK.
Constituency Explorer can be shared online, and embedded in your website by clicking on the <embed> link at the bottom of a results set, then copy and paste the code into your web editor.
Picture credit: The Parade_Leamington Spa_Aug13 by Ian, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY_NC 2.0)