Fact check: Petition data shows how many people in MP’s constituency have signed
An X user claimed both Sir Keir Starmer and Bridget Phillipson signed a petition calling for a general election multiple times.
An X user reposted a comment and image from a fellow contributor on the platform which showed a snapshot of data of those who signed a petition calling for another general election.
In their repost, they wrote: “Hey look their fantastic petition is so good even Keir Starmer has signed 584 times so far. Check out some of the other names Bridget Phillipson 1659 – she must hate her job.”
Evaluation
Both Sir Keir Starmer and Bridget Phillipson did not sign the petition multiple times. The data shows how many signatures have been recorded from their constituencies, and those of other MPs.
The facts
When viewing the petition in question, a section called ‘about petition data’ can be found at the bottom of the page, which reads: “The data shows the number of people who have signed the petition by country as well as in the constituency of each Member of Parliament.”
In the case of Sir Keir, the 584 figure means there were 584 signatures recorded as coming from his constituency of Holborn and St Pancras. The same logic applies to the figure of 1,659 recorded for Ms Phillipson’s constituency of Houghton and Sunderland South, as well as the other MPs in the snapshot of the petition reposted by the X user.
On the petition page, users can click to “get petition data” in json format.
This data shows that since the repost, the number of signatures recorded for both Sir Keir and Ms Phillipson’s constituencies have increased – and are likely to rise further. At the time of writing, the number of signatures for Sir Keir’s constituency was 2,114 and Ms Phillipson’s, 5,837.
