“Nothing has changed” was the infamous quote made by Theresa May during this year’s UK election campaign over a policy u-turn. This marked the beginning of a reverse of the Conservative support in the polls which eventually led to the changes that changed the political geography of the United Kingdom significantly when compared to the just as surprising result of the 2015 election. The following map uses the same approach as the previous map series showing the winning party in each constituency, but adds further detail to the picture by also highlighting how seats have changed between the last and this election:
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Britain elects: The results (summer edition 2017)
The United Kingdom went to the polls…again. Following the general election in 2015 and the referendum on the country’s membership in the European Union in 2017, the British electorate had yet another chance to have their say about the country’s future. After the then prime minister David Cameron delivered referendum which he had promised to win the 2015 election, the British electorate voted for leaving the European Union by a small majority of 51.9% which led to Cameron’s resignation. Theresa May took over leadership of the Conservative party and became Prime Minister in July 2016. After first resisting calls for a general election, she eventually decided otherwise in the expectation of strengthening her conservative majority during the Brexit process. However, the election on June, 8th led to the opposite. The Conservative party lost its majority in parliament with the Labour party making significant gains. The following map series shows the result of the election from three perspectives. The conventional map (left) provides the most common perspective, while the hexagon-map gives a clearer picture of the distribution of parliamentary seats where each seat is represented by a hexagon (middle, changes in constituencies results in some hexagons being split). The gridded population cartogram (right) provides the most accurate depiction of how many people are represented by each party, as it gives each person in the UK an equal amount of space (while constituencies vary sometimes significantly in their population size):
Views of the 2015 UK election
The 2015 general election in the United Kingdom has ended with a very unexpected outcome resulting in a much clearer outcome as predicted in the polls. The Conservative Party with the old and new Prime Minister David Cameron has secured a majority in the new parliament, winning 331 of the 650 seats. As the BBC concludes: “The Conservatives win a 12-seat majority in parliament as Labour are almost wiped out by the SNP in Scotland and the Liberal Democrats suffer major losses.”
Looking at the election results in a conventional map, this very clear outcome becomes even stronger, with much of the map being dominated by blue (for the Conservatives) and yellow (for the Scottish National Party). Very little consolation for the main losers, but a more honest picture emerges, when changing the perspective, as shown in the following map series. The hexagon map shows the real political representation as it emerges in the Westminster Parliament, with every constituency being coloured according to the winning political party there. The third map in the series is an equal-population projection which gives every person living in the UK the same amount of space, so that the true picture of how people are being represented is painted. The latter differs slightly from the constituency view, as the constituencies in the UK are not only differing in (land area) size, but also in population size (which is part of a critical debate about electoral reform). So here is the complete picture of the 2015 general election:
