CLP Nominations and Data Validation

Which local parties nominated which candidate for leader?

On April 4th, Labour will announce the results of its leadership election. The victor will become the Leader of the Opposition.

This article looks at nominations by constituency parties, and differences between data sources.

The data

To get on the ballot, 10% (22) of current MPs or MEPs must nominate candidates. This first stage is followed by needing the nominations of:

• 5% (33) of Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs);
• or three affiliates, two of which must be trade unions, which in total represent at least 5% of affiliated members.

In a welcome step, the Labour Party were publishing nominations for each stage, in both the Labour leadership and deputy leadership contest. These web pages were regularly updated.

Each candidate is listed, with the nominating parties stated by their name.

My original goal was to create a spreadsheet which linked each CLP to its constituency ONS identification number, to help social researchers.

Getting to know your data

When dealing with a data source, it is important to understand the underlying mechanisms. Unintended ignorance can be costly for analysis.