Politics and Data Analytics

Politics and data analytics is a degree for those who want to understand how political systems work and who also want the quantitative tools to study them rigorously. Political science has always involved data, but the increasing availability of large datasets, from election results and survey data to social media activity and administrative records, has transformed what empirical political research can do. Combining political theory with data analytics means you can ask not just what politics is but how to study it in a way that produces reliable and generalisable findings.

At the University of Manchester, this three-year full-time programme develops both your understanding of political and international relations theory and your ability to translate those theories into empirical questions that can be addressed using real data. You will study political theory, comparative politics, international relations, quantitative research methods, statistical analysis, data visualisation, and programming skills relevant to political data analysis. The combination trains you to be a rigorous analyst of political phenomena, capable of working with the kinds of evidence that governments, parties, think tanks, and civil society organisations increasingly depend on.

Graduates are well placed for roles in public policy research, government analysis and statistics, think tanks, political consultancy, electoral research, journalism with a data focus, and international organisations that depend on rigorous empirical analysis. The combination of political understanding and data skills is unusual and increasingly sought after in roles that require both substantive knowledge of politics and the technical ability to handle and interpret large datasets. Postgraduate study in political science, data science, and policy analysis is a natural progression for those who wish to develop their expertise further.