Dictionary keys with list value

You can use defaultdict with list as default value and then iterate through votes and append it:

from collections import defaultdict votes = ['johny', 'Eli', 'Eli', 'Jane', 'Ally', 'Johny', 'john', 'Eli'] votes_dictionary = defaultdict(list) for vote in votes: votes_dictionary[vote].append(vote) # votes_dictionary will be an instance of defaultdict # to convert it to dict, just call dict print(dict(votes_dictionary)) # outpout {'johny': ['johny'], 'Eli': ['Eli', 'Eli', 'Eli'], 'Jane': ['Jane'], 'Ally': ['Ally'], 'Johny': ['Johny'], 'john': ['john']} 

votes_dictionary={} for i in votes: try: votes_dictionary[i].append(i) except KeyError: votes_dictionary[i] = [i] print(votes_dictionary) 

I see there are three Elis, so typically it would look like this:

output = {} for name in votes: output.setdefault(name, []) output[name].append(name) print(output) 

Output:

{'johny': ['johny'], 'Eli': ['Eli', 'Eli', 'Eli'], 'Jane': ['Jane'], 'Ally': ['Ally'], 'Johny': ['Johny'], 'john': ['john']} 

Or,

import copy output = copy.deepcopy(mydictionary) for name in votes: output[name].append(name) print(output): 

output:

{'johny': ['johny'], 'Eli': ['Eli', 'Eli', 'Eli'], 'Johny': ['Johny'], 'Jane': ['Jane'], 'john': ['john'], 'Ally': ['Ally']} 

Now, if you want to limit to two even if there are three elements:

output = {} for name in votes: # to maintain the order, you can iterate over `mydictionary` output[name] = [name]*min(2, votes.count(name)) print(output) 

output:

{'johny': ['johny'], 'Eli': ['Eli', 'Eli'], 'Jane': ['Jane'], 'Ally': ['Ally'], 'Johny': ['Johny'], 'john': ['john']} 

Another fun way to achieve two occurrences of Eli would be, itertools.groupby:

>>> from itertools import groupby >>> {key: [*group] for key, group in groupby(reversed(votes))} {'Eli': ['Eli', 'Eli'], 'john': ['john'], 'Johny': ['Johny'], 'Ally': ['Ally'], 'Jane': ['Jane'], 'johny': ['johny']} 

myDictionary = {'johny': [], 'Eli': [], 'Johny': [], 'Jane': [], 'john': [], 'Ally': []} votes = ['johny', 'Eli', 'Eli', 'Jane', 'Ally', 'Johny', 'john', 'Eli'] for x in votes: myDictionary[x].append(x) 

votes_dictionary = {} votes_dictionary = votes_dictionary.fromkeys(votes) for i in votes: if not votes_dictionary[i]: votes_dictionary[i] = [] votes_dictionary[i].append(i) print(votes_dictionary) 

A lot of answers have been posted, if you really want to use the fromkeys() method, you could do something like this