The 2015 UK general election is history and many stories have been told about the unexpected victory of the Conservative party. But the picture of the election is far more diverse than it seems and the political landscapes are more polarised than a conventional map of the first votes can show.
This poster, submitted as an entry to the joint BCS-SoC ‘Mapping Together’ Conference starting tomorrow in York, presents the electoral doctrine of the 2015 election. It is a cartographic roundup of the beliefs of the electorate in thirty-nine images that tell the full story of a shift in political paradigms that will shape the debates for the elections to come:
Tag Archives: general election
Changing Political Landscapes of Britain
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:
In Focus: The General Election 2010
A map showing the detailed results of this year’s General Election in Great Britain is now featured in the “In Focus” section of Political Insight journal (September 2010, Volume 1, Issue 2). The accompanying article written by Danny Dorling and me includes a brief analysis of the swings in the new Parliament at Westminster.
Here are the bibliographic details:
- Dorling, D. and Hennig, B. D. (2010). In Focus: General Election 2010. Political Insight1 (2): 72.
Article online (Wiley)
More election maps can be found here.
The content on this page has been created by Benjamin Hennig. Please contact me for further details on the terms of use.
General Election 2010: The swings that did matter
We have seen and heard a lot about the election outcome, not only on this website (here, here, here, here and here), but one more map: The following hexagon map (see here for a comparison of the different map types we are using) shows the changes that have actually taken place in the constituencies. The colour scheme indicates where seats have changes between the parties, and where they remained the same. For a clearer picture, the national parties in Scotland (SNP) and Waled (PC) have been put together under one colour.
This map is also available as a kmz file for GoogleEarth and other compatible software, which allows to zoom in and identify constituencies (a geographical version of the map is also included in the file).
Click here to download the kmz file (15MB)
General Election 2010: Different views
The following three map show different ways of mapping the British election results in comparison. The left map uses a traditional projection (using the British National Grid), which represents the geographical area and thus overemphasises the vote of rural areas (making blue much more dominant than the real results are). The map in the middle uses hexagons to represent the constituencies, so that this map distorts land area in favor of a representation of seats in the British Parliament. This kind of visualisation has recently become very popular in the media and is now a common feature on most online election maps (like the BBC one). The right map shows the election results on the gridded population cartogram, which has been shown in more detail on this website before. Here the projection puts the population distribution in focus, so that this reflects best how many people are represented by a certain party. The overall picture is more similar to the constituency-based map than the land area map, however, is still shows some differences as constituencies are not exactly the same population size (for administrative reasons, but not least also because not all people in an area are entitled to vote). Each of the maps is useful for itself depending on what you want to know about the election outcome, as all three are telling a very different story of it.
(click for larger view)The content on this page has been created by Benjamin Hennig. Please contact me for further details on the terms of use.
General Election 2010: A Population Cartogram
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:
The content on this page has been created by Benjamin Hennig. Please contact me for further details on the terms of use.