OTL Election maps resources thread

[Thande]

I like how Grimsby had a WILD UKIP APPEARS! LABOUR USED CONTAINMENT! IT'S NOT VERY EFFECTIVE! result in 2014, and then 2015 was basically a rerun of 2011. Kind of symbolic of the election as a whole.

The question is how much of an effect the euro-election had on UKIP's chances. UKIP already did well in the 2013 county council elections though so it can't only be that. Obviously the general election turnout and the way it focuses people on Conservative vs Labour also played an issue.

2016 is going to be interesting, especially if they end up holding the EU referendum on the same day...

 

[Arsonist]

The rest of Cheshire's councils for your viewing pleasure.

Cheshire East, a solidly Conservative council with the only opposition being in the more urban areas. Surprising number of *Insert-Place-Here* First candidates who are eating away at the Conservative dominance, but they gained a seat in Macclesfield Central through a interesting split of the vote (ward here)

Halton, covering the towns of Runcorn and Widnes is showing a nigh-impregnable Labour heartland, averaging 63.75% of the overall vote and the Lib Dems loose their sole councillor on a general election turnout. While it isn't showing up on the map, UKIP got 12% of the vote so it may be interesting to see if they can push onwards from that, especially when the Conservatives got 16%.

Warrington is showing the squeeze on the Lib Dems in the North, especially on a general election turnout. Doesn't seemed to have much of an effect on the parliamentary majorities though, as in Warrington North it's been near enough a straight Lib Dem to UKIP swing while in Warrington South the Lib Dem vote has split fairly evenly between Labour, Conservative and UKIP

 

[Uhura's Mazda]

The rest of Cheshire's councils for your viewing pleasure.

Cheshire East, a solidly Conservative council with the only opposition being in the more urban areas. Surprising number of *Insert-Place-Here* First candidates who are eating away at the Conservative dominance, but they gained a seat in Macclesfield Central through a interesting split of the vote (ward here)

Middlewich First majority 2020!Nantwich has always been Middlewich lebensraum!

I might add that there were a couple of 'Hull Red Labour' candidates which I think is one of those 'Labour deselects councillors and they switch to that kind of label' thing, though there might be more to it than that.

Yeah, basically that. They refused to vote for the austerity programme so they got rejected. HRL is one of those mini-parties that are 'affiliated' to TUSC, but it might be a Lutfur Rahman scenario where they expect to be re-admitted to Hull Real Labour within months, so they don't bother doing proper accounts or anything. IIRC the one standing for re-election this time round got beaten by a frankly ridiculous margin (votes in the double-digits?) and the other comes up for re-election next year, so they've probably had it.

 

[Thande]

The rest of Cheshire's councils for your viewing pleasure.

Fantastic work, appreciate it. I notice that one southern Lib Dem ward in Halton finally went down after hanging on in every cycle by a tiny majority, general election turnout makes itself known...

Yeah, basically that. They refused to vote for the austerity programme so they got rejected. HRL is one of those mini-parties that are 'affiliated' to TUSC, but it might be a Lutfur Rahman scenario where they expect to be re-admitted to Hull Real Labour within months, so they don't bother doing proper accounts or anything. IIRC the one standing for re-election this time round got beaten by a frankly ridiculous margin (votes in the double-digits?) and the other comes up for re-election next year, so they've probably had it.

Yeah, these deselected councillors (Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party is another common flag of convenience) seem to collectively have an unrealistic idea of how much of a personal vote they have, when nearly all their voters were voting for Labour, not them as an individual.

I kept meaning to do this, so I've done one of those popular vote summaries for Doncaster as well. Some observations:

- Much more even spread of votes compared to the last all-ups after boundary changes (see here, though I was using a different colour scheme then) which may be due to the general election turnout, I'd have to look at 2010 for comparison to be sure.
- Ironically one of UKIP's two wins was in a ward where they got one of their smallest voteshares (Rossington & Bawtry, the bottom right corner). That's because a popular independent who also won distorted the voteshares. Similarly Mexborough is paler for all the parties because of the popular Placename First outfit there now.
- The state of collapse of the Lib Dems is evident. Surprisingly the Tories also missed out on candidates for two wards (surprising because they even managed a full slate in Sheffield where they're in far worse shape than Doncaster, where at least they can still win seats). The boundary changes might be related to this. Hexthorpe & Balby North ward had TUSC breaking 10%, very unusual, but that again might be due to the small number of candidates. Its low turnout even for a working-class area is likely related both to this and the fact that much of its theoretical electorate are EU immigrants who won't vote.
- The Greens did slightly better in rural Tory-voting areas than urban Labour ones, unsurprising for Doncaster, but didn't really get very far anywhere.
- The whole 'Tory voting areas have higher turnout' thing mentioned earlier in the thread is very visible here.

 

[Thande]

Bit of a side project, I decided to try out my turnout colour scheme above on US elections as well...

I have had to add an extra colour to it, no prizes for guessing which end of the scale it's on.

 

[Arsonist]

And the rest of Merseyside follows:

Wirral first, where the general election turnout results in Labour gaining a ward from both the Lib Dems and the Greens in Birkenhead and generally stronger majorities across the board, giving Labour just enough to take Wirral West in the generals.

Sefton next, where the Lib Dems are loosing ground to the Conservatives in Stockport for the council but still have enough votes for the Lib Dem MP for Stockport to hold on.

Knowsley - all Labour with the largest opposing party on voteshare being First for Kirby with 5.96% of the vote.

And no change in St Helens, with the Lib Dems and Conservatives both holding 1 ward each with the rest falling to Labour.

 

[area11]

And the rest of Merseyside follows:

Wirral first, where the general election turnout results in Labour gaining a ward from both the Lib Dems and the Greens in Birkenhead and generally stronger majorities across the board, giving Labour just enough to take Wirral West in the generals.

I might be confused here but as it's an elections in thirds council don't the Greens still have the seat they one last year?

 

[Arsonist]

I might be confused here but as it's an elections in thirds council don't the Greens still have the seat they one last year?

Sorry, I should have made that clearer - I meant that Labour had won the 2 wards that the Lib Dems and Greens won last year.

 

[prime-minister]

Not sure how useful it is but I have a map of the 1945 UK election here. (It's pretty limited given that it doesn't distinguish Conservatives from National Liberals and doesn't include NI, but it's better than nothing.)

 

[Thande]

And the rest of Merseyside follows:

Great work as before!

Not sure how useful it is but I have a map of the 1945 UK election here. (It's pretty limited given that it doesn't distinguish Conservatives from National Liberals and doesn't include NI, but it's better than nothing.)

Thanks, is that yours or did you find it elsewhere? I tried to do 1945 MANY MOONS AGO but gave up because of the unusual partial and temporary boundary changes compared to 1918-35.

 

[Ed Costello]

Knowsley - all Labour with the largest opposing party on voteshare being First for Kirby with 5.96% of the vote.

It's really quite disconcerting, seeing all the shades of red get darker and darker - my ward has gone from being one of the stronger Labour wards to one of the weakest, despite the party's voteshare remaining pretty constant...

 

[prime-minister]

Thanks, is that yours or did you find it elsewhere? I tried to do 1945 MANY MOONS AGO but gave up because of the unusual partial and temporary boundary changes compared to 1918-35.

I found a map which had the percentage majorities on, and just made the seats a standard one-colour-per-party. On a side note, I find it really incredible that my home constituency (admittedly by a tiny majority) went Labour in this election.

 

[Thande]

Bit of a side project, I decided to try out my turnout colour scheme above on US elections as well...

I have had to add an extra colour to it, no prizes for guessing which end of the scale it's on.

Right, here we are. I was originally only going to do the last few elections, but then I found a spreadsheet with data going back to 1980, and, well, you know how it is...

The first thing that obviously stands out is the sheer difference in turnout between presidential and midterm years!

Some very interesting trends here. Overall turnout has not changed that much over the years from a national point of view, but the balance within the USA has changed a lot. It used to be the case that the northern and western states had high turnout and the South had low turnout: more recently the South has come up (especially the Carolinas, Georgia and Kentucky) and the north and especially the Plains states have gone down. Minnesota and Maine on the other hand have increased their turnout and the consistency of it. Colorado is a more anomalous recent appearance as a high turnout state, I believe because of them now automatically mailing a ballot to everyone by default. I was surprised at how much DC has gone up, and Hawaii is an exception to the rule as it has similar turnouts every election regardless of whether it's a presidential or a midterm - I guess because by the time the polls open there it's already clear who's going to be president?

 

[Alex Richards]

Christ 2014's so bad, it could be a map of an election in Liverpool!

 

[Thande]

Christ 2014's so bad, it could be a map of an election in Liverpool!

I see what you did there.

It occurs to me that the turnout map and the normal party shading map for Liverpool would look pretty much the same

 

[Arsonist]

I see what you did there.

It occurs to me that the turnout map and the normal party shading map for Liverpool would look pretty much the same

Actually, turnout across Liverpool City averaged 65%, though I wouldn't want to print off this map due to fears of running out of red ink

 

[Thande]

Actually, turnout across Liverpool City averaged 65%, though I wouldn't want to print off this map due to fears of running out of red ink

Oh, nice work! And yeah, I was thinking of the turnout in a normal local election rather than a synchronised one. I have tried printing these off before and you tend to lose the distinction of the shades - Alex will attest to my latest attempt at our recent forum meetup where I tried playing with the saturation settings until I got something that looked hopelessly pastel on a screen but reasonable on a printout.

Interesting to contrast the dispersed nature of UKIP support there with the more focused campaigns of the Lib Dems and Greens.

Actually, I know what would make the Americans feel better about themselves: me mapping turnout in European Parliament elections



Anyway, more Yorkshire councils: Harrogate and Richmondshire.

Harrogate is the last of the elections-in-thirds councils, although they do it in an unusual way where Harrogate and Ripon towns elect one councillor in one year, a second councillor in the next year, and then they don't vote in the third year but the rural hinterland single-member wards elect instead. This election it was one of the town cycles, and the Lib Dems did surprisingly well in the face of the general election turnout, even regaining a seat lost in 2011. This comes off the partial recovery they managed in 2014. The Lib Dems did not contest Ripon town which is its own little world politically with its own independents, who the Tories demolished. However on a parliamentary level the Lib Dem position collapsed in a seat they had held until the 2010 election: this is not necessarily just ticket splitting, as the Lib Dems' council performance was off the back of careful targeting and marginal victories, while the Tories had a big lead in the council popular vote. The Greens, UKIP and Labour all stood full or nearly full slates, but got nowhere.

Richmondshire on the other hand is a real Tory bonfire of the independents, with the Conservatives taking control of the council for the first time ever (ironically in such a deep-blue area). A number of independents survived however, with some of them recreating another organised group like in 2003 and others remaining independent-independents. Surprisingly, while the Lib Dems lost two of their four 2011 councillors (one of whom went independent and failed to regain her seat with that status), they achieved a big swing in their favour in Richmond Central and held both seats there. On a parliamentary level there was what I believe was the biggest swing against the Tories anywhere in the country (William Hague retired and was replaced by a parachutee) but the collapse of the Lib Dems from their second place meant the Tory majority didn't actually decrease that much.

 

[Uhura's Mazda]

Look! A Continuity Liberal! Drink! Drink! Drink!

 

[Thande]

Look! A Continuity Liberal! Drink! Drink! Drink!

You're going to be in trouble when I do the East Riding, they had a by-election a few months before the general which had the possibly unique outcome "UKIP GAIN FROM SDP".

 

[Uhura's Mazda]

You're going to be in trouble when I do the East Riding, they had a by-election a few months before the general which had the possibly unique outcome "UKIP GAIN FROM SDP".

"Joke's on them. This is a half-pint."
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