Well I am a political (electoral system) geek, I love looking at elections in countries and seeing how they reflect what the people want etc. No system is perfect, and some good systems produce bad results and viceversa.
Here I look at Irish general elections which use Proportional Representation - Single Transferrable Vote(PR-STV).
I have grouped together Sinn Fein(1918/1921), Anti-Treaty-SF, Republicans and Fianna Fail
I have grouped together Pro-Treaty-SF, Cumann na nGaedheal and Fine Gael
I have aslo grouped together Offical SF, SFWP and WP, as well as Abstentionist SF, PSF, H-Block and Sinn Fein
Unionists I have kept, but perhaps I could interpret independents and map them with the Irish Unionists, such as the Trinity College TD up until 1937.
Others/Independents in opinion polls often includes minor parties, in some cases the green party, workers party, socialist party, people before profit, and more recently Renua and Social democrats
Alliance of Alliances - for 2016 the People Before Profit Alliance (Socialist Workers Party and others) and the Anti-Austerity Alliance (Socialist Party and others) formed a pact to fight 2016, so the PBP-AAA are clumped together, now rebranded Solidarity-PBP. In the 2011 election the PBP and Socialist party fought an election with Seamus Healys (WaUG) under the banner United Left, which got 5 TDs but 3 of them left Healy, Daly and Collins. AAA rebranded itself Solidarity, so the alliance of alliances is now called Solidarity-PBP
The independent alliance, which got TD's elected in 2016 and joined the government, I treat as a a party
Othere independent groupings, such as the Rural Independent grouping, or Independents 4 Change, I just treat as independents.