Tag Archives: cartogram

General Election 2010: A Population Cartogram

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Another map of the British election results: This time we mapped all winning parties in relation to the population distribution. Like in the previous maps (Here: 1, 2, 3), we used the gridded population cartogram as a basemap, because unlike conventional maps (showing land area) or the increasingly used constituency maps (showing one shape per constituency), this maps resizes the results related to the population distribution. It shows, how many people are represented by the winning party, and each grid cell refers to the same geographical extent. The smaller a grid cell, the fewer people are living there, so that rural areas are those were many lines are close together, whereas conurbations literally bulge out of the map. For better identification, some places are labeled, so that the geographical reference is easier to make (see the second version below for more detail). So here is the true picture of the people’s vote in Britain:
A true map of the British General Election results 2010: The people's vote

The content on this page has been created by Benjamin Hennig. Please contact me for further details on the terms of use.

UK elections: 2005 and 2010

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Now that you know the results of the general election, and also had a look back at earlier elections, see here what has really changed: This is a short animation shows the British general election results in relation to the population distribution from 2005 transforming into the 2010 results and back in a loop:

Changing election landscape in Britain 2005-2010
(click to view larger version)

If the animation doesn’t start straight away, give it a few seconds or minutes to load completely. It has 7 MB in size and may take a while depending on the speed of your internet connection.

The content on this page has been created by Benjamin Hennig. Please contact me for further details on the terms of use.

British General Election Results 2010

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Decision day is gone – and no decision on the future administration yet. The British General Election will be keeping us (and the politicians) busy for a while, so there is plenty of time for an analysis of the election results. This map shows the winning parties in all constituencies (the results from Thirsk & Malton where added on May, 27) mapped on the gridded population cartogram of Great Britain.

Winners of the British General Election 2010 mapped on a gridded population cartogram(click map for larger view)

Technical notes: This cartogram reflects the real population distribution in Great Britain and thus the total number of people living in an area. Each grid cell thus represents the same physical area, but is resized according to the number of people living in this area. We used the British National Grid as a reference projection. More gridded cartograms and further information on the techniques that we used to create these maps can be found on the worldmapper website at http://www.worldpopulationatlas.org/.

The content on this page has been created by Benjamin Hennig. Please contact me for further details on the terms of use.

A History of Election Results in Britain

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The Road to No 10 is a rough one, full of potholes this year. And as everyone’s waiting for the results of the General Election 2010, there are still a few hours left to have a look at election results in retrospect. The following maps step back in history. On the first map we show a representation of the winning party in a constituency projected on a gridded population cartogram – click the map for a large version of the map:
Winners of the British General Election 2005 shown on a gridded population cartogramThe left of the following two maps shows the total number of (then winning) Labour votes in the 2010 election, projected onto the UK’s population cartogram and thus giving a clue of the relation of Labour support to the population distribution back in those days. The right map is an animation of all election results since 1832, with each circle representing one constituency (this map is a previous work of the Sasi Research Group).

Total numbers of Labour votes in the UK 2005 General Election
(click for larger view)
Results of the General Elections in Great Britain from 1832 to 2005
(click for larger view)

For those few undecided or those who are bored waiting for the results: Watch this talk on Tackling Social Inequality – Will your vote make a difference?

The content on this page has been created by Benjamin Hennig. Please contact me for further details on the terms of use.

Capitalism in Crisis?

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The following two maps show the countries of Europe and the World resized according to their total external debt, whereas the colours indicate a country’s debt by gdp ratio. The maps are an outcome of a commissioned work for the Times newspaper, and putting those two slightly different values on one map may raise criticism, even if both values on it’s own make for a good depiction of the current state of the economic world – or the burden that some national governments currently face. Also, the data used must be judged carefully. Not just since Greece went on the global stage with its crisis it is quite obvious that economic statistics do not always reveal the real truth. Having said all that, these maps still draw an impressive picture of the current crisis in Europe and the world:

Map of debt and the debt/gdp ratio in the countries of the European Union 2010(click map for larger view)

(click here for large map)

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A population-centric map projection

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Here is some material from a presentation at this year’s  AAG Annual Conference in Washington DC. The presentation People powered maps: A population-centric map projection was given in the session on Topics in GIS, Remote Sensing, and Spatial Analysis and showed some new works on our grid-based cartograms (as presented at GISRUK 2009 and ESRI UC 2009).
The following animation shows the transformation of a topographic map of the United States, ending in a grid-based population cartogram (and then reversing). Please notice that loading the animation takes a while on slower internet connections:

USA Animated Population Cartogram with Topography
(click for larger view)

This is the full presentation given at the AAG Meeting. Please note that the animated parts such as the above animation are not shown in this Slideshare version:

The content on this page has been created by Benjamin Hennig. Please contact me for further details on the terms of use.