In the wake of over a million people signing a petition against a state visit for US President Donald Trump (report and GitHub repo) in February we reported on the areas of the UK most likely to sign petitions, including an interactive feature allowing you to see where your area ranked (shown above).
The story was written by Dan Wainwright with additional research by Ioana Dumitrescu.
In the story Stephen Coleman, professor of political communication at the University of Leeds, said:
"If they are only empowering the usual people who vote and participate in other ways, they will exacerbate the gap between the political efficacy of the already active and the limited influence of the least confident."
However, we found no correlation between election participation and petition participation, suggesting that those who signed petitions may not be the same people who vote.
Data for each petition can be downloaded from the official UK petitions website - a 'Get petition data (json format) link is at the bottom of each petition page. Alternatively, you can just add .json to the end of any petition URL, e.g. the JSON link for the EU referendum petition at https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/131215 is https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/131215.json
- Interactive search: How many people sign Parliament petitions where you live?
- Bar chart: Most popular Parliament petitions ever
- Bar chart: Areas signing Parliament petitions the most
- Infographic: Getting your voice heard - How does a petition get discussed?
- Bar chart: Areas signing Parliament petitions the least