This page makes the case for choropleth maps on Wikipedia election articles. "Choropleth" means "cluster zones". A Choropleth map is a map that uses different hues of the same color, for the clustered variable.
Typically, election maps on Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia display the jurisdiction's constituencies ("districts", "ridings", "wards", etc.) colored by the party that won it. This makes perfect sense: under Plurality (First-past-the-post), whoever tops the district, gets the seat.
However, under the various forms of Proportional Representation, no-one "wins" a district: districts are multi-member, and coming first is no more meaningful than coming second, only the share of votes is (which by design gives the share of seats).
As a reminder, PR methods are in use in:
(That is, in summary, most liberal democracies and jurisdictions!)
As the examples below show, using maps of district winners for PR elections has many shortcomings:
Most electoral maps on Wikipedia show district winners even under Proportional Representation, despite it is in such case meaningless, potentially deceptive for election analyses, and illegible overall:
Some designers prefer to color small dots or squares representing seats, instead of representing zones. Their legibility is questionable:
If one wants to analyze an election under PR, then one should better use party-specific choropleth maps, which use hue progression to show the varying degrees of success in the various districts. The degrees should be divided in 4 or 5 natural breaks (Jenks): this method allows readers to extract the most meaning (unlike arbitrary intervals, or standard deviation) while staying very close to the distribution of data.
I have often seen these maps in use by political pundits, " psephologist"s, and sociologists in continental Europe, in particular France and Germany. The English Wikipedia is largely written by users who do not live in countries using PR, and this probably explains why it hasn't caught up on that particular custom of political science in non-English-speaking countries.
As a sidenote, it could be argued that chorochromatic maps would be more accurate than choropleth ones, especially when a state has districts with largely unpopulated areas, such as the Australian Outback (for upper house elections), the Scandinavian polar circle, the Kazakh Steppe, Russian Siberia etc.
Here's a list of choropleth election maps posted on Wikimedia:
An outstanding map made in 2021 by User:Ivonster04. Uses 5 hues with a rough clustering adapted to each party, that works very well. With maps like this you can understand Bulgarian politics very quickly!
Czech Wikipedia User MrGreg has created about a hundred maps, solely for Czech elections (legislative since 1992, presidential runoffs since 2013).
He also has two maps of district turnout variations, using 9 hues corresponding to 2.5% intervals [<-10;>10], and two maps of district turnout, using the range of presidential run-off elections.
All in all, they are very legible, and provide immediate insight of each party's strong areas.
Complete gallery of MrGreg's maps
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Presidential elections
Legislative electionsVolby 2021
Volby 2017
Volby 2013Volby 2010Volby 2006Volby 2002Volby 1998
Volby 1996Volby 1992 |
Made by commons:User:Stadscykel in 2011. Used 5% intervals (except for the first 10 percent, and the last interval), which means there were from 7 to 10 hues for the 4 bigger parties. Did not contribute later. PS 2015 was made by commons:User:URunICon.
See also: commons:Maps of Finland - general elections by year and party.
de:User:Wahlatlas, apparently the owner of the website of the same name, made these wonderful maps, with 5 degrees and (seemingly) natural breaks.
User:Furfur made these maps for the 2009 election. The number of intervals range from 4 to 9 (!) because of the 5%-interval chosen arbitrarily.
User:Hilarus von Baerenstein uploaded just one beautiful map, with 6 intervals adapted to each party chosen manually:
Here, the use of hues for different intervals provides many clues to our understanding of Germany before WWII:
Outstanding maps were made by User:JandK87 for Ireland's Dail elections (since 1921) and Northern Assembly (since 1973). However, he stopped editing after 2011, came back for the 2016 election, and never edited again. It turns out that another user made and imposed his own maps starting in 2011, where seats won are shown as tiny dots on a dark grey map. see Category:Election maps of the Republic of Ireland on Commons
Made by User:RaviC:
commons:User:沁水湾 made many electoral maps, including one that defines as a choropleth map using 5 hues:
In 2022, she crafted 7 maps for the 2021 Japanese general election, one for each party that won seats through the PR method:
...she even added them on the election page with a switcher!
commons:User:ShadZ01 recently produced these awesome maps of the most recent Kazakh elections (2019 and 2021). There are 4 intervals for the minor parties and 5 for the dominant party, which makes sense. The ranges do not seem to be broken with a statistical tool, but rather manually. No legend whatsoever is included; it has to be written somewhere else.
2021 Kazakh legislative election:
made by commons:User:沁水湾
Made by commons:User:Vanished user 1932142 in 2020. Used 6 hues, corresponding to 3-percent-intervals:
Made by Robert Wielgórski, known by the username Barry Kent (commons) (also wp:pl wp:en) right after the 2007 elections. He made use of varying interval numbers and lengths for each party.
User:Welkend ( commons) has just made awesome maps for the 2022 Portuguese legislative election, using 5 intervals for each party. Intervals are all of equal size (except PS's first one?) which highlights voter concentration:
Several interesting maps were done by User:Avopeas who was mostly active in 2017, and blanked his talk page in 2019. He is still active on commons (User page) where he updates average polling graphs for Scandinavian countries.
The author did much better with this map of population density, although the intervals are quite arbitrary.
2014 Swedish general election § Results by municipality
Results of the 2018 Swedish general election
2002 Swedish general election and 2006 Swedish general election (the two blocs received >97%):
Feminist Initiative and Sweden Democrats:
2017 Norwegian parliamentary election.
2021 Norwegian parliamentary election.
User:Gust Justice made these maps for the 2022 Danish general election. It was embedded in the main page using a switcher template. His work is remarkable
The clustering algorithm is unknown but the result appears to be balanced, except.
Australian User:Erinthecute, who has made countless illustration maps for election pages on Wikipedia, recently began to notice the usefulness of choropleth maps, beginning with Slovakia, the city of Graz (see § Cities) and Portugal. She is using 4 to 6 hues by party, usually 5:
commons:User:Liqid1010 made a handful of maps following the 2020 Slovak parliamentary election, using nine 5%-intervals.
sk:User:Mikulas1 crafted many maps in 2017, but sadly, stopped contributing. His maps, using for each party a variable number of (mostly) 5%-intervals, have not yet been integrated into Wikipedia's English articles on Slovak parties and elections:
Other choropleth maps of elections in Slovakia found:
commons:User:沁水湾 attempted to mix two types of maps, one large with bullet points for seats, the others are small party-specific choropleth maps with number. I am not sure the first one is necessary at all, and removing it would increase the size of choropleth maps, making the numbers legible.
Made by es:User:Adaklein, who did just a few dozen contributions to Wikipedia, and this is his only map posted on Mediawiki. Uses 6 hues. Quite legible (except the legend's police font).
Turkish User:Nub Cake made these choropleth maps of the performance of Turkish political parties over the recent years. There are 7 hues, but the margins are not provided:
With the help of User:Nub Cake, User:Mondolkiri, who is now banned from editing, made these maps using 10% intervals:
Previously, User:Emreculha made other maps for Turkish parties' performance, using a wide palette of hues, representing 5% intervals (which leads to similar legibility issues as for Swedish/Norwegian maps).
User:QuartierLatin1968 made these maps in 2007 using a color gradient instead of discrete hues. The result is more legible than 10 or 20 hues. The user is still contributing to Wikipedia projects.
User:MustafaKurt and User:Bibilili
Made by commons:User:Tohaomg (also uk:Користувач:Tohaomg) following the 2019 snap elections. The number of intervals varies between 5 and 9. The ranges are ad hoc. On the one hand, it quickly conveys where parties are strong and weak. On the other hand, the hues are not, however, standardized -- leaving the impression that the 3rd party came in front of the 1st.
The first modern Ukrainian election per se:
Maps for the period between 1994 and 2002 (besides turnout) were made by commons:User:Nazar.galitskyj in 2013-14 and 2019. Uses few hues, but very informative:
commons:User:DemocracyATwork contributed solely to Wikipedia between 2008 and 2010 to upload content about Ukrainian elections:
Well-done maps at the district level were made back in 2006 by User:Olegzima:
commons:User:DemocracyATwork made the same maps twice -- one highlighting regional strongholds (using the shares of the parties' nationwide votes), the other showing regional success (relative to other parties in the region):
User:Green Zero ( commons:User:Green Zero) made these maps for the 2014 Ukrainian presidential election:
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↑ Порошенко Petro Poroshenko (54.70%) | ↑ Тимошенко Yulia Tymoshenko (12.81%) | ↑ Ляшко Oleh Liashko (8.32%) | |||
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↑ Гриценко Anatoliy Hrytsenko (5.48%) | ↑ Тігіпко Serhiy Tihipko (5.23%) | ↑ Добкін Mykhailo Dobkin (3.03%) | |||
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↑ Рабінович Vadim Rabinovich (2.25%) | ↑ Богомолець Olga Bogomolets (1.91%) | ↑ Симоненко Petro Symonenko (1.51%) | |||
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↑ Тягнибок Oleh Tyahnybok (1.16%) | ↑ Ярош (0.70%) | ↑ Гриненко (0.40%) | |||
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↑ Коновалюк (0.38%) | ↑ Бойко (0.19%) | ↑ Маломуж (0.13%) | |||
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↑ Кузьмін (0.10%) | ↑ Куйбіда (0.06%) | ↑ Клименко (0.05%) | |||
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↑ Цушко (0.05%) | ↑ Саранов (0.03%) | ↑ Шкіряк (0.02%) |
commons:User:Brythones and commons:User:MrPenguin20 made these maps in 2016-2017, using 5% or 2.5% intervals:
commons:User:沁水湾 just made these pretty maps, using 5% intervals, which in this case works very fine:
Although you would think that the USA, not using Proportional Representation in any circumstance, do not need choropleth maps, commons:User:沁水湾 has found a very good use, with multi-candidate primaries. She uses 5% intervals, which makes extremes very legible:
Similarly, User:MisterElection2001 made choropleth maps for minor presidential candidates, by county:
Mostly used on Wikipedia for the United Kingdom local elections (as each ward has multiple seats)
commons:User:Magog the Ogre/Political maps
also see
This page makes the case for choropleth maps on Wikipedia election articles. "Choropleth" means "cluster zones". A Choropleth map is a map that uses different hues of the same color, for the clustered variable.
Typically, election maps on Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia display the jurisdiction's constituencies ("districts", "ridings", "wards", etc.) colored by the party that won it. This makes perfect sense: under Plurality (First-past-the-post), whoever tops the district, gets the seat.
However, under the various forms of Proportional Representation, no-one "wins" a district: districts are multi-member, and coming first is no more meaningful than coming second, only the share of votes is (which by design gives the share of seats).
As a reminder, PR methods are in use in:
(That is, in summary, most liberal democracies and jurisdictions!)
As the examples below show, using maps of district winners for PR elections has many shortcomings:
Most electoral maps on Wikipedia show district winners even under Proportional Representation, despite it is in such case meaningless, potentially deceptive for election analyses, and illegible overall:
Some designers prefer to color small dots or squares representing seats, instead of representing zones. Their legibility is questionable:
If one wants to analyze an election under PR, then one should better use party-specific choropleth maps, which use hue progression to show the varying degrees of success in the various districts. The degrees should be divided in 4 or 5 natural breaks (Jenks): this method allows readers to extract the most meaning (unlike arbitrary intervals, or standard deviation) while staying very close to the distribution of data.
I have often seen these maps in use by political pundits, " psephologist"s, and sociologists in continental Europe, in particular France and Germany. The English Wikipedia is largely written by users who do not live in countries using PR, and this probably explains why it hasn't caught up on that particular custom of political science in non-English-speaking countries.
As a sidenote, it could be argued that chorochromatic maps would be more accurate than choropleth ones, especially when a state has districts with largely unpopulated areas, such as the Australian Outback (for upper house elections), the Scandinavian polar circle, the Kazakh Steppe, Russian Siberia etc.
Here's a list of choropleth election maps posted on Wikimedia:
An outstanding map made in 2021 by User:Ivonster04. Uses 5 hues with a rough clustering adapted to each party, that works very well. With maps like this you can understand Bulgarian politics very quickly!
Czech Wikipedia User MrGreg has created about a hundred maps, solely for Czech elections (legislative since 1992, presidential runoffs since 2013).
He also has two maps of district turnout variations, using 9 hues corresponding to 2.5% intervals [<-10;>10], and two maps of district turnout, using the range of presidential run-off elections.
All in all, they are very legible, and provide immediate insight of each party's strong areas.
Complete gallery of MrGreg's maps
|
---|
Presidential elections
Legislative electionsVolby 2021
Volby 2017
Volby 2013Volby 2010Volby 2006Volby 2002Volby 1998
Volby 1996Volby 1992 |
Made by commons:User:Stadscykel in 2011. Used 5% intervals (except for the first 10 percent, and the last interval), which means there were from 7 to 10 hues for the 4 bigger parties. Did not contribute later. PS 2015 was made by commons:User:URunICon.
See also: commons:Maps of Finland - general elections by year and party.
de:User:Wahlatlas, apparently the owner of the website of the same name, made these wonderful maps, with 5 degrees and (seemingly) natural breaks.
User:Furfur made these maps for the 2009 election. The number of intervals range from 4 to 9 (!) because of the 5%-interval chosen arbitrarily.
User:Hilarus von Baerenstein uploaded just one beautiful map, with 6 intervals adapted to each party chosen manually:
Here, the use of hues for different intervals provides many clues to our understanding of Germany before WWII:
Outstanding maps were made by User:JandK87 for Ireland's Dail elections (since 1921) and Northern Assembly (since 1973). However, he stopped editing after 2011, came back for the 2016 election, and never edited again. It turns out that another user made and imposed his own maps starting in 2011, where seats won are shown as tiny dots on a dark grey map. see Category:Election maps of the Republic of Ireland on Commons
Made by User:RaviC:
commons:User:沁水湾 made many electoral maps, including one that defines as a choropleth map using 5 hues:
In 2022, she crafted 7 maps for the 2021 Japanese general election, one for each party that won seats through the PR method:
...she even added them on the election page with a switcher!
commons:User:ShadZ01 recently produced these awesome maps of the most recent Kazakh elections (2019 and 2021). There are 4 intervals for the minor parties and 5 for the dominant party, which makes sense. The ranges do not seem to be broken with a statistical tool, but rather manually. No legend whatsoever is included; it has to be written somewhere else.
2021 Kazakh legislative election:
made by commons:User:沁水湾
Made by commons:User:Vanished user 1932142 in 2020. Used 6 hues, corresponding to 3-percent-intervals:
Made by Robert Wielgórski, known by the username Barry Kent (commons) (also wp:pl wp:en) right after the 2007 elections. He made use of varying interval numbers and lengths for each party.
User:Welkend ( commons) has just made awesome maps for the 2022 Portuguese legislative election, using 5 intervals for each party. Intervals are all of equal size (except PS's first one?) which highlights voter concentration:
Several interesting maps were done by User:Avopeas who was mostly active in 2017, and blanked his talk page in 2019. He is still active on commons (User page) where he updates average polling graphs for Scandinavian countries.
The author did much better with this map of population density, although the intervals are quite arbitrary.
2014 Swedish general election § Results by municipality
Results of the 2018 Swedish general election
2002 Swedish general election and 2006 Swedish general election (the two blocs received >97%):
Feminist Initiative and Sweden Democrats:
2017 Norwegian parliamentary election.
2021 Norwegian parliamentary election.
User:Gust Justice made these maps for the 2022 Danish general election. It was embedded in the main page using a switcher template. His work is remarkable
The clustering algorithm is unknown but the result appears to be balanced, except.
Australian User:Erinthecute, who has made countless illustration maps for election pages on Wikipedia, recently began to notice the usefulness of choropleth maps, beginning with Slovakia, the city of Graz (see § Cities) and Portugal. She is using 4 to 6 hues by party, usually 5:
commons:User:Liqid1010 made a handful of maps following the 2020 Slovak parliamentary election, using nine 5%-intervals.
sk:User:Mikulas1 crafted many maps in 2017, but sadly, stopped contributing. His maps, using for each party a variable number of (mostly) 5%-intervals, have not yet been integrated into Wikipedia's English articles on Slovak parties and elections:
Other choropleth maps of elections in Slovakia found:
commons:User:沁水湾 attempted to mix two types of maps, one large with bullet points for seats, the others are small party-specific choropleth maps with number. I am not sure the first one is necessary at all, and removing it would increase the size of choropleth maps, making the numbers legible.
Made by es:User:Adaklein, who did just a few dozen contributions to Wikipedia, and this is his only map posted on Mediawiki. Uses 6 hues. Quite legible (except the legend's police font).
Turkish User:Nub Cake made these choropleth maps of the performance of Turkish political parties over the recent years. There are 7 hues, but the margins are not provided:
With the help of User:Nub Cake, User:Mondolkiri, who is now banned from editing, made these maps using 10% intervals:
Previously, User:Emreculha made other maps for Turkish parties' performance, using a wide palette of hues, representing 5% intervals (which leads to similar legibility issues as for Swedish/Norwegian maps).
User:QuartierLatin1968 made these maps in 2007 using a color gradient instead of discrete hues. The result is more legible than 10 or 20 hues. The user is still contributing to Wikipedia projects.
User:MustafaKurt and User:Bibilili
Made by commons:User:Tohaomg (also uk:Користувач:Tohaomg) following the 2019 snap elections. The number of intervals varies between 5 and 9. The ranges are ad hoc. On the one hand, it quickly conveys where parties are strong and weak. On the other hand, the hues are not, however, standardized -- leaving the impression that the 3rd party came in front of the 1st.
The first modern Ukrainian election per se:
Maps for the period between 1994 and 2002 (besides turnout) were made by commons:User:Nazar.galitskyj in 2013-14 and 2019. Uses few hues, but very informative:
commons:User:DemocracyATwork contributed solely to Wikipedia between 2008 and 2010 to upload content about Ukrainian elections:
Well-done maps at the district level were made back in 2006 by User:Olegzima:
commons:User:DemocracyATwork made the same maps twice -- one highlighting regional strongholds (using the shares of the parties' nationwide votes), the other showing regional success (relative to other parties in the region):
User:Green Zero ( commons:User:Green Zero) made these maps for the 2014 Ukrainian presidential election:
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|||
↑ Порошенко Petro Poroshenko (54.70%) | ↑ Тимошенко Yulia Tymoshenko (12.81%) | ↑ Ляшко Oleh Liashko (8.32%) | |||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|||
↑ Гриценко Anatoliy Hrytsenko (5.48%) | ↑ Тігіпко Serhiy Tihipko (5.23%) | ↑ Добкін Mykhailo Dobkin (3.03%) | |||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|||
↑ Рабінович Vadim Rabinovich (2.25%) | ↑ Богомолець Olga Bogomolets (1.91%) | ↑ Симоненко Petro Symonenko (1.51%) | |||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|||
↑ Тягнибок Oleh Tyahnybok (1.16%) | ↑ Ярош (0.70%) | ↑ Гриненко (0.40%) | |||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|||
↑ Коновалюк (0.38%) | ↑ Бойко (0.19%) | ↑ Маломуж (0.13%) | |||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|||
↑ Кузьмін (0.10%) | ↑ Куйбіда (0.06%) | ↑ Клименко (0.05%) | |||
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|||
↑ Цушко (0.05%) | ↑ Саранов (0.03%) | ↑ Шкіряк (0.02%) |
commons:User:Brythones and commons:User:MrPenguin20 made these maps in 2016-2017, using 5% or 2.5% intervals:
commons:User:沁水湾 just made these pretty maps, using 5% intervals, which in this case works very fine:
Although you would think that the USA, not using Proportional Representation in any circumstance, do not need choropleth maps, commons:User:沁水湾 has found a very good use, with multi-candidate primaries. She uses 5% intervals, which makes extremes very legible:
Similarly, User:MisterElection2001 made choropleth maps for minor presidential candidates, by county:
Mostly used on Wikipedia for the United Kingdom local elections (as each ward has multiple seats)
commons:User:Magog the Ogre/Political maps
also see