The House of Commons Library, in collaboration with Durham University, is pleased to announce Constituency Explorer: a new online data visualisation tool that allows statistical comparisons at a Parliamentary constituency, regional and national level.

  • Which constituency has the most people going to work by bicycle?
  • Which constituency in London has the most graduates? Which the fewest?
  • Which constituency has the highest rate of divorce?

(Mouse over to reveal answer)

Constituency Explorer uses official statistics from the Census and other sources to examine over 150 variables, including population, travel to work, qualifications, health, and much more. Users are free to explore the data for themselves, taking advantage of the site’s intuitive tabulation tools to analyse a chosen constituency relative to others in the nation, by region or by party of the MP after the last General Election.

Try it for yourself:

<img class=”alignnone wp-image-1894″ src=”https://i2.wp.com/commonslibrary.files.wordpress task management app.com/2015/03/constituency-explorer-print-screen.jpg?resize=664%2C435&ssl=1″ alt=”Constituency explorer print screen” data-recalc-dims=”1″ />

And why not try our quiz – how well do you know your constituency? As well as challenging experienced users to test their own statistical skills, the quiz is designed to encourage viewers who may not otherwise be confident in analysing data to do so in an engaging manner.

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. 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 cover the whole of the UK-wide, official statistics in many areas are devolved and many even where constituency data are produced they may not be for the whole the UK.

The House of Commons Library has championed the production and use of official statistics for parliamentary constituency areas across the UK for many years. 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 UK Statistics Authority in a Monitoring Brief in 2012 which concluded that producers of official statistics should aim where possible to produce and publish constituency statistics with a common approach used across the UK.

The new constituency explorer website uniquely provides UK-wide interactive data for parliamentary constituencies to provide a fascinating insight into the make-up of these areas.

ConstituencyExplorer can be shared on Twitter and Facebook; it can be embedded in your own website; a report for a particular constituency and the underlying data can be downloaded.

Go, explore …..!

Richard Cracknell