Election maps & cartograms

Mapping votes rather than land: county and constituency results, swing, cartograms, hex and tile maps, dot density and value-by-alpha.

A mostly red land map with a few small blue cities turning into a grid of equal red and blue hexagons. land does not vote; people dolandseats / votesIn 2024, Republican-won counties covered 88% of the land and cast 51% of the votes

An election map has a problem that most maps do not: the thing being counted is people, but the thing being drawn is land. On a county map of the 2024 US presidential election, counties won by the Republican cover 88% of the land and cast 51% of the votes; on a geographic map of the 2024 UK general election, Labour's 411 seats take less than a third of the paper. Every guide here is about closing that gap honestly.

They start from real results — US county returns for 2020 and 2024, the House of Commons Library's 2024 constituency results and the German 2025 Bundestag results — and work through the joins that quietly go wrong, then the alternatives to an area map: contiguous and Dorling cartograms, hex and tile maps, swing arrows, dot density and value-by-alpha.

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⚙️ Then do the task

Step-by-step walkthroughs with code you can copy and adapt.

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🔧 When it breaks

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Related topics

Subjects that keep coming up alongside this one, most overlap first.

🎨 Cartography & map design 🖼️ Maps & visualisation 🔗 Joins & relationships 👥 Census & demographics

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