Methodology
How Ontario Pulse collects, processes, and presents voting data from the Ontario Legislative Assembly.
Where the data comes from
Ontario Pulse draws on two primary sources of public data:
- Division vote records published by the Ontario Legislative Assembly after each sitting day, including the motion text, how each MPP voted, and whether the motion carried or was lost.
- MPP profiles from publicly available government data, including name, party, riding, and contact information. Riding boundary data is also sourced from public records.
Data is updated regularly. For full source details and licensing, see the Data Sources page.
How we calculate metrics
Ontario Pulse derives several metrics from the raw voting data. Here is what each one means:
- Attendance rate
- The percentage of recorded division votes in which the MPP cast a vote (yea or nay). An MPP marked absent on a given division lowers their attendance rate.
- Majority alignment
- The percentage of votes where the MPP voted with the winning side. A high score means the MPP often voted with the majority, not necessarily that they support any particular ideology.
- Voting blocs
- For each pair of MPPs, the percentage of motions (where both were present) on which they voted the same way. Absences are excluded from the calculation.
- Close votes
- Ranked by how narrow the margin was between yeas and nays. Unanimous votes (zero nays) are excluded from the close votes list.
- Topics
- Votes are categorized into policy areas (housing, healthcare, environment, etc.) based on keywords in the motion text. A single vote may appear under multiple topics.
- Bill tracking
- Bill numbers are identified from the motion text. All recorded division votes for a bill are grouped together across sitting days, so you can follow a bill's full legislative history.
What the data does not cover
- — Only recorded division votes are included. Voice votes and consent-agenda items are not individually recorded by the legislature.
- — Committee votes are not currently tracked. Ontario Pulse covers full-house division votes only.
- — Topic categorization uses keyword matching, which may not capture every relevant motion.
- — There may be a short delay between when a vote takes place and when it appears on the site.