Discovering Data
  • Home
  • Blog

What issues have people been petitioning government on?

6/18/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
The following website lists UK parliamentary petitions.
You can download the data in json or csv format.

The top ten petitions over the last few years are:
Picture
​1    EU Referendum Rules triggering a 2nd EU Referendum
2    Prevent Donald Trump from making a State Visit to the United Kingdom.
3    Give the Meningitis B vaccine to ALL children, not just newborn babies.
4    Block Donald J Trump from UK entry
5    Stop all immigration and close the UK borders until ISIS is defeated.
6    Accept more asylum seekers and increase support for refugee migrants in the UK.
7    Consider a vote of No Confidence in Jeremy Hunt, Health Secretary
8    Donald Trump should make a State Visit to the United Kingdom.
9    Make the production, sale and use of cannabis legal.
10    Stop spending a fixed 0.7 per cent slice of our national wealth on Foreign Aid

Over the last year or so Brexit, the EU and a possible official visit by Trump to the UK are big issues, immigration and health are also prominent. There are some right wing petitions: 5, 8 and 10. Number 5 is calling for something like Trump's travel ban in the US. And some left wing petitions: 2, 4, 6 and 7. 

​If we take all the petition titles and remove the stop words we can generate the following word cloud:
Picture
The following post from my code blog explains how to generate word clouds.
0 Comments

Using NLTK to analyse vocabulary in political manifestos

6/5/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
The technical process:
  1. download the manifesto pdf files
  2. convert the pdf files to text files
  3. use NLTK to remove stopwords and get the common words used in each manifesto
​This required two scripts, the first converted the pdf files to text files, I used the script here. The second script is on my code blog.

The results:
DUP
[('northern', 147), ('ireland', 102), ('n', 99), ('dup', 88), ('new', 40), 
('westminster', 29), ('uk', 26), ('support', 25), ('public', 25), ('national', 21), 
('people', 18), ('united', 18), ('deal', 17), ('needs', 17), ('manifesto', 16), 
('trade', 16), ('must', 14), ('also', 14), ('best', 14), ('wminster', 13), ('eu', 13), 
('across', 13), ('irelands', 13), ('economic', 13), ('identity', 13), ('military', 12), 
('would', 12), ('better', 12), ('positive', 12), ('believes', 12)]


UUP
[('northern', 51), ('ireland', 33), ('ulster', 23), ('unionist', 22), ('best', 18), 
('united', 16), ('party', 16), ('brexit', 13), ('westminster', 13), ('mps', 12), 
('local', 12), ('union', 12), ('work', 11), ('manifesto', 11), ('one', 11), ('remain', 9), 
('great', 8), ('need', 8), ('many', 8), ('yet', 8), ('would', 8), ('public', 7), 
('south', 7), ('tom', 7), ('executive', 7), ('kingdom', 7), ('people', 7), ('election', 7), 
('danny', 6), ('better', 6)]

Alliance
[('northern', 170), ('alliance', 110), ('ireland', 103), ('uk', 75), 
('support', 65), ('ensure', 51), ('would', 43), ('change', 40), ('public', 37), 
('economic', 35), ('also', 32), ('westminster', 32), ('work', 30), ('government', 30), 
('european', 29), ('direction', 27), ('need', 27), ('deal', 26), ('across', 26), 
('executive', 26), ('international', 25), ('political', 25), ('brexit', 24), 
('must', 24), ('eu', 24), ('significant', 23), 
('continue', 23), ('tax', 23), ('human', 22), ('welfare', 22)]

Sinn Fein
[('brexit', 44), ('eu', 35), ('sinn', 32), ('rights', 30), ('tory', 25), ('health', 23), 
('north', 23), ('irish', 19), ('access', 18), ('european', 17), ('vote', 16), 
('within', 16), ('party', 15), ('special', 14), ('services', 13), ('ireland', 13), 
('status', 13), ('election', 13), ('cuts', 12), ('funding', 12), ('designated', 12), 
('dup', 12), ('new', 11), ('unity', 10), ('trade', 9), ('priorities', 9), ('people', 9), 
('british', 8), ('good', 8), ('friday', 8)]


TUV
[('tuv', 97), ('northern', 95), ('ireland', 81), ('politics', 42), ('would', 41), 
('principled', 41), ('talking', 41), ('straight', 41), ('stormont', 35), ('sinn', 34), 
('fein', 30), ('people', 27), ('need', 27), ('dup', 22), ('government', 22), ('public', 20), 
('believes', 19), ('first', 19), ('uk', 19), ('must', 18), ('irish', 17), ('health', 16), 
('brexit', 15), ('eu', 15), ('one', 15), ('money', 15), ('assembly', 15), ('could', 14), 
('language', 14), ('mental', 14)]


SDLP
[('sdlp', 262), ('northern', 154), ('ireland', 104), ('new', 97), ('ensure', 85), 
('must', 58), ('support', 58), ('people', 55), ('believes', 51), ('also', 45), 
('investment', 39), ('public', 39), ('housing', 39), ('education', 39), ('better', 37), 
('government', 37), ('local', 35), ('development', 35), ('services', 32), ('strategy', 32), 
('economy', 31), ('across', 31), ('health', 30), ('areas', 30), ('community', 30), 
('sector', 29), ('economic', 28), ('work', 27), ('social', 27), ('future', 26)]
​Note the SDLP manifesto for the Westminster election can not be scanned using the pdf to text script so I scanned their Stormont manifesto from March 2017.
0 Comments

    Archives

    June 2018
    December 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Blog