Why 87 people?
Human beings aren't wired to understand large-scale statistics. In psychology, “innumeracy” and “psychic numbing” describe our evolutionary inability to emotionally register what numbers like “4%” or “47%” actually represent when applied to millions of citizens.
When a poll says 4% of the country holds a view, it feels negligible. But when you map that to a standard British double-decker bus, that 4% represents over three seats. Imagine getting onto your morning commute and seeing three real people sitting right at the front, passionately holding that exact view — suddenly, the statistic becomes a social reality you can picture.
Furthermore, 87 is a mathematically stubborn number. Unlike 100, it doesn't cleanly divide into neat, round intervals. This is a deliberate feature: because your brain cannot effortlessly convert 87 back into a clinical percentage, it forces you to look at the visual data for what it truly represents — an indivisible group of human beings sharing a single space.
The methodology, briefly
Every entry starts as a set of percentages from a single poll. Each percentage is converted to a seat count by multiplying by 87 and rounding to the nearest whole passenger — so 4% becomes roughly 3.5, which rounds up or down depending on what else is happening on the bus. Because real-world percentages rarely divide evenly into 87 seats, the rounded totals are then nudged, one seat at a time, from whichever group currently holds the most passengers, until the bus seats exactly 87 people.
No group that registered a genuine, non-zero share in the source polling is ever rounded down to zero. If 1% of respondents held a view, at least one person is on that bus holding it.
Why the percentages don't always add up to 100. Pollsters round each figure to a whole number, so a published set can sum to 99 or 101. Where a source's figures sum to exactly 100, they are used as published. Where they don't, the figures are used as published, and the bus is still built to seat exactly 87 people using the rounding rule above.
Polls and official statistics. Most buses are opinion polls: a sample of people asked a question. Some are not. A few are counts of who actually holds a role or was admitted somewhere, such as the share of MPs who are women or who went to private school. Those come from official releases and published research, and the source line says which kind each one is. They are drawn the same way, but they describe a group of people rather than what people think.
Estimates. Where no official count exists and the figure rests on a published estimate or a think tank's own tally, the entry carries an Estimate tag, and its commentary explains how the number was reached and how firm it is.
Corrections. If a figure looks wrong, or a source has been updated, please say so: use Report a correction in the footer, or email support@the87project.com. Fixes are made to the entry itself, and a note is added to its commentary when the change is more than a typo.
Where a poll reports a “don't know”, “unsure”, or “undecided” share, those passengers are drawn as flat, translucent grey figures and seated at the back of each deck — visually distinct, but still counted and still on the bus. Hiding or excluding undecided respondents would flatter the size of the “real” majority; The 87 keeps them in view instead.
Every figure on this site comes from a named, publicly available poll, official statistical release or published research, drawn mainly from a short list of recognised sources:
- YouGov
- Ipsos
- More in Common
- The Office for National Statistics (ONS)
- GOV.UK statistical releases
- House of Commons Library briefings
- Sutton Trust, the Parker Review, British Future and other published research
Each entry links directly to its original source. Nothing on this site is modelled or invented by us. A few entries rest on published estimates rather than an official count (for example, how many MPs are Black or from working-class jobs, where no official record exists) and each of those says so in its commentary and source line. If a well-sourced, reasonably recent figure for a question can't be found, the entry simply doesn't get made.
Polls are not perfectly interchangeable. Different pollsters use different panels, question wording, and fieldwork dates, so figures from two different organisations on a related topic — most visibly in the Cabinet section, which mixes YouGov and Ipsos favourability data — should be read as two separate snapshots rather than one continuous trend. Where it materially affects how a result should be read, the entry's own analysis says so explicitly.
New entries are added as new, well-sourced UK polling becomes available, with the most recent questions and Society-category entries prioritised nearer the top of the feed so the newest thinking is the first thing you see. There's no fixed publishing schedule — this is an independent, personal project, updated as time and good data allow.
Who made this
The 87 Project is a personal project by Anna Glynn-Henley, built to make opinion polling and official statistics easier to picture. It isn't affiliated with any employer, political party or pollster, and every figure links to the source it came from. Spotted a mistake, or just want to say hello? Email support@the87project.com.
Our buses
Every poll on the site so far, one bus per poll, parked by section and colour-coded to match — the whole fleet at a glance. The traffic on the roads is just for show. Click any parked bus to jump to its section.