Trying to predict the outcome of today’s UK election? Spent a last frantic few moments comparing the proposals from the various candidates or parties? Interested in understanding the demographics of the voters? Wondering whether there’s a correlation between a constituency’s average income and number of Tory votes, or its diversity and UKIP support? Certainly maths is everywhere and we could spend hours and hours analysing, modelling and predicting – as the newspapers and numerous other blogs have been doing for the past months.

Here at chalkdust, however, our curiosity was piqued by something (only slightly!) less controversial and certainly a lot more fun: determining the similarity between the Twitter accounts of two of the main protagonists of the 2015 election, Ed Miliband and Nigel Farage, who live on opposite ends of the political spectrum.
Continue reading →