James Siddle has analysed the voting records of the incumbent MPs in the UK parliament to see how often they rebel against the party line, and who they side with then they do.
The previous graph provides some nice insights, but there’s a further technique we can apply to more clearly partition the clusters that seem to have emerged. Gephi (the tool used to build these vizualizations) has a built-in algorithm for detecting communities, and applying that algorithm consistently partitions the MPs in the following way:
The three groups that were suggested the previous visualization are clearly de-marked the algorithm, confirming that there are cohesive groups that can be detected.
But interestingly Zac Goldmith (another well known, and somewhat controversial figure in UK politics) appears in a separate, smaller community from the larger group of rebels making up the Conservative cluster. This may be because Mr. Goldsmith has looser ties to the other Conservative rebels, and a stronger connection to Marsha Singh from Labour.
At least – that’s what the data suggests…
Visualizing Rebel Alliances in the UK Government