Sources, Methods & Editorial Standards

Free, unauthenticated UK polling API providing composite monthly averages across all major polling firms, individual poll data, historical trends, and betting odds. Covers all major UK polling houses including YouGov, Ipsos, More in Common, Opinium, Find Out Now, BMG, Techne, Verian, Focaldata, and JL Partners.

The UK Electoral Commission publishes all declared donations to political parties above the legal threshold of £11,180. Data includes donor name, amount, date, and donation type. Published quarterly with a 30-day reporting lag.

TheyWorkForYou provides structured data on all UK MPs including voting records, attendance, speeches, written questions, and committee appearances. Data is sourced from official Hansard records.

Official UK Parliament API providing biographical data, committee memberships, and registered interests for all current MPs.

Public First is an independent research and communications consultancy. Their policy tracker monitors Reform UK and Labour policy positions against stated commitments.

Left Foot Forward is a progressive news website that tracks political accountability. Their Reform UK u-turn tracker is regularly updated with sourced documentation.

Open Council Data UK aggregates councillor data from all English and Welsh local councils, providing party affiliation, ward, and term information for all sitting councillors.

Reform Watch tracks incidents involving Reform UK officials including suspensions, resignations, and misconduct. This dashboard uses Reform Watch data for incident tracking only — not for the main councillor database.

The LSE Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment published a peer-reviewed analysis in March 2026 documenting Reform UK-controlled councils' approach to climate targets. The study examined 9 Reform-led councils and found 7 had formally scrapped or suspended climate action plans.

The Rycroft Review (published 25 March 2026) is an independent review commissioned by the Cabinet Office into countering foreign financial influence and interference in UK politics. Its 17 recommendations include a ban on crypto donations, an overseas donor cap, and enhanced Electoral Commission enforcement powers. Several recommendations directly target vulnerabilities in Reform UK's current funding model.

KCL's 2021 'Culture Wars in the UK' report established that 75% of the British public do not consider themselves to be on either side of a culture war, while politicians and media disproportionately amplify culture war framing. This dashboard uses KCL's framework to calculate the amplification ratio between Reform UK's PR output and genuine public concern levels.

UCL doctoral researchers, in collaboration with The Guardian, published a 100-year analysis of immigration sentiment in Hansard in February 2026 using LLM-assisted labelling. The analysis covers 1920–2026 and shows sentiment scores for all major parties converging toward more restrictive rhetoric. This dashboard reproduces their published chart as an indicative reconstruction, with a planned live Hansard API upgrade.

The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford provides independent, evidence-based analysis of UK migration policy. Their March 2026 analysis documents Labour's policy adoptions on immigration and asylum since entering government, providing the primary sourcing for the Labour Policy Convergence Tracker's timeline.

A documented public statement, vote, or official party communication that directly contradicts a specific commitment made in the Reform UK 2024 General Election manifesto. Requires at least one primary source (Hansard, official statement, or verified news report).

The evidence is mixed — some statements or actions support the original pledge, others contradict it. The party has not formally clarified its position.

No documented contradiction with the original manifesto commitment has been identified. The party continues to publicly support the position.

A policy position or campaign issue that has become prominent since the 2024 election but was not a stated commitment in the manifesto.

A donor whose registered address as declared to the Electoral Commission is outside the United Kingdom. This classification does not imply illegality — overseas UK nationals are permitted donors under UK law. It is a factual description of the declared address.

UK council voting records are held across 75+ individual council websites in incompatible formats. No central API exists. Manual scraping at scale is not currently feasible.

X (formerly Twitter) API access for research purposes now costs approximately £5,000/month. Reddit and YouTube APIs have rate limits that make systematic sentiment tracking impractical without significant infrastructure.

The current chart is a reconstruction from the UCL/Guardian published visualisation (February 2026), not a live API feed. LLM-assisted Hansard labelling requires significant compute resources.

The Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP) has not yet published its 2024 UK election coding. Expected late 2026. This would enable a more rigorous quantitative comparison of Labour's ideological shift.

The Electoral Commission publishes donation data with a 30-day regulatory lag. Donations declared in the current quarter may not yet appear.

Sentiment analysis is performed on a sample of mentions from Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok. These platforms have API rate limits, and sentiment classification via LLM is not 100% accurate. Sentiment reflects engaged users, not representative of broader population. Updated weekly, not real-time.

Comprehensive council voting records would require scraping 300+ individual council websites in incompatible formats. This section represents a sample of 4 councils with available public records. Not scalable without dedicated infrastructure or FOI requests.

The departure log has been expanded from 31 to 67 entries, but comprehensive coverage would require continuous manual sourcing from Mark Pack's tracker, HOPE not hate, and local press. Ongoing maintenance requires dedicated resources.