Methodology

Data Sources

Last updated: July 8, 2026

A transparent breakdown of where PolitIQ's data comes from, how often it updates, and exactly how the Influence Score is calculated.

1. Our Commitment to Transparency

Every Influence Score on PolitIQ is derived from a documented, repeatable pipeline — not manual curation. This page explains exactly where our data comes from, how often it refreshes, and how the score is calculated, so journalists, researchers, and politicians can verify our methodology.

2. Primary Data Sources

Source	What we get from it
MLA Portal API	Official base profiles — name, party, state, constituency, and registered social media handles
Apify (social scraping)	Public follower counts, post frequency, and engagement metrics from Facebook, Instagram, X, and YouTube
Politician self-service portal	Profile corrections submitted directly by verified politicians

We only ingest data that is publicly visible on a politician's own social media profiles — we do not access private messages, private accounts, or any data requiring special permissions.

3. What We Track — and What We Don't

We track: public social media activity and reach belonging to sitting politicians and candidates, in their capacity as public officials.

We do not track: private citizens, personal accounts unrelated to public office, private messages, or any data behind a login wall we don't have explicit access to.

4. Update Frequency

Our data pipeline runs on a fixed schedule, in this order:

Pipeline stage	Cadence
Politician profile sync (MLA Portal)	Every 6 hours
Social media snapshot sync (Apify)	Every 6 hours
Influence Score recalculation	Every 24 hours
Trend discovery crawl	Every 24 hours

A newly onboarded politician can also be fast-tracked: our admin webhook triggers an immediate social and score sync rather than waiting for the next scheduled run.

5. How the Influence Score Is Calculated

The Influence Score (0–100) blends four weighted dimensions, each computed from the current and prior-week social snapshots:

Dimension	Weight	What it measures
Social Engagement	40%	Average engagement rate across all connected platforms
Audience Growth	25%	Follower growth rate compared to the snapshot from 7 days earlier
Platform Reach	20%	Total followers, normalized against a 5-million-follower ceiling
Platform Diversity	15%	Number of active platforms out of four — Facebook, Instagram, X, and YouTube

National and state ranks are assigned after each recalculation. A state's leaderboard only becomes publicly visible once at least 10 politicians in that state have a computed score — this avoids misleading rankings built from too small a sample.

6. Data Accuracy & Corrections

Registered politicians can review their own profile and social handles from the self-service portal and submit corrections directly. If you believe a public leaderboard entry contains an error — an incorrect handle, party, or constituency — email support@politiq.in and we will investigate.

7. Limitations

The Influence Score is a measure of digital reach and engagement only. It does not, and is not intended to, capture:

Ground-level constituency work, governance quality, or legislative record
Traditional media coverage (print, TV, radio)
Offline events, rallies, or in-person engagement
The truthfulness or tone of any individual post

We encourage readers to treat the score as one input among many, not a standalone judgment of a leader's effectiveness.

8. Third-Party Attribution

Social media data is collected via Apify's scraping infrastructure in accordance with each platform's publicly available data. Official politician records are sourced from the MLA Portal API. PolitIQ is not affiliated with Meta, X Corp., Google/YouTube, or any government body operating these data sources.