Three days after the UK general election, the formation of a new (old) Conservative government is in full preparation with few new faces on the one side, and soul searching and the search for new faces on the other side of the political spectrum. There has also been plenty of joy for map lovers (even if they may not be equally happy with the outcome), including my own map series of the winning parties in each constituency. The following map series uses the same approach but shows further details on how things have changed in the political landscape of the country compared to the 2010 general election:

(click for larger version)

The different colours look at where constituencies changed hands between the 2010 and 2015 election (not taking any by-elections into account where seats may have changes). The map series itself again compares a conventional map to two different types of cartograms: The hexagon cartogram in the middle is based on the idea of giving each constituency an equal share in the map by using hexagon shapes for the constituencies. The gridded population cartogram on the right hand side is using an equally distributed grid as a base and then resizes each grid cell according to the total number of people living in that space. Larger grid cells therefore show larger populations, while grid cells in the sparsely populated areas shrink accordingly. The last map gives the most honest picture when it comes to showing how people are represented in their political views (because constituencies have varying population sizes). It also allows comparing the more rural areas (with the smaller grid cells where the black lines almost converge) to the most densely populated regions (with the most blown up grid cells), seeing how rural versus urban voting compares in the country.
Whatever map one might prefer, only the different perspectives allow for a more complete picture as each of the map projections has its own advantages and disadvantages. Regardless of whether you like or dislike the outcome of this election, these are the new political landscapes of Britain for the next five years from a cartographic perspective, and the changes that happened over the past five years (see more from the 2010 election and beyond here, here, here, here, here or here.

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