I have still been working on my map for the next United Kingdom general election in 2010. I have now finished six of the nine regions of England: South East, South West, Greater London, East, East Midlands and West Midlands. This adds up to 375 seats out of 533 in England and 650 across the entire UK. I’ve uploaded the latest version which you can download from the Maps page.
Ben, what colour are you going to use for the SNP? Shouldn’t you have used orange for the Lib Dems so you can use yellow for the SNP? (or are you saving orange for the UUP and another colour for the SNP?)
btw, has anyone pointed out that on your Qld council wards map your colour coding of the Brisbane City Council wards is out of date – reflects the seat status prior to the March 2008 election? (or have you updated that since the version I’m looking at that I downloaded a couple of months ago?)
I probably haven’t updated the Brisbane CC colours. I should do that at some point.
As goes the UK map, I don’t know what I’ll do with the SNP. I tried making the Lib Dems orange but it looked very similar to yellow and it didn’t look very good. I might just have to make the SNP green to make them stand out. It may not be completely accurate but the important point is to have them stand out from each other.
It’s not a big deal, though. It’s very easy to change the colours at some point in the future, at least compared to the work of drawing the map.
Yeah it sounds like a huge task – you’re doing a terrific job. Are you then planning to do a seat-by-seat preview for all 650 constituencies before the election?
Using Green for the SNP probably the simplest solution, and no probs with it being the same for PC as we can all tell the difference because they’re in different regions.
From the BBC, the list of the candidates for the Norwich North by-election (on the 23rd of July):
Peter Baggs (Independent)
Thomas Burridge (Libertarian Party)
Anne Fryatt (None of The Above Party)
Bill Holden (Independent)
Laud Howling (The Official Monster Raving Loony Party)
Craig Murray (Put An Honest Man into Parliament)
Chris Ostrowski (Labour)
April Pond (Liberal Democrat)
Rupert Read (Green)
Chloe Smith (Conservative)
Glenn Tingle (UK Independence Party)
Robert West (British National Party)
Labor had a ~5500 vote majority before sitting member Ian Gibson quit over the expenses rorts. And ya gotta love the “None of the Above” and “Official Monster Raving Loony” Parties.
Use green for the SNP & PC – they caucus with the Greens (as part of the Greens-EFA group) in the European Parliament.
Nick,
I doubt I will do a seat-by-seat preview. UK Polling Report are doing a fantastic job, and I’m planning to do more seat-by-seat work for the SA, Victorian, NSW and federal elections over the next 18 months.
A few random 5am thought bubbles…
* It might make plenty of sense to colour SNP / Plaid Cymru / both seats green, as there aren’t any actual Greens, and I think those three parties line up with each other in Euro elections etc.
* Doubling up on colours probably doesn’t matter for Northern Ireland, as all the parties there are unique to there. Plus, it’s not like politics there has much to do with Britain.
* I wonder why the Lib Dems do so well in Cornwall?
* Keep a lazy eye out for the Greens in the Norwich North by-election – they did very well in local elections last month in the city of Norwich, won 7 wards out of 12 I think (1 or 2 each to Labour, Tories, Lib Dems, UKIP). Some with pretty good figures – not even Adele Carles can dream of getting 60-70% of the primary vote.
Yeah, I think I will make SNP and Plaid Cymru the same shade of Green. Sinn Fein will be dark green, SDLP light green, UUP the same blue as the Conservatives and DUP orange.
As far as the Lib Dems in Cornwall, it’s not just about Cornwall but the whole of the South West. While they have half a dozen or so seats each in London and South East, 3 in East, 2 in West Midlands and only 1 in East Midlands, they have 18 seats in South West on these numbers. This is reflected all across the spectrum, South West is definitely Lib Dem heartland.
Although I think 2005 was the only time the Lib Dems have won all seats in Cornwall.
If the UK had preferential voting then the LibDems would have more of the South because most Labor voters would preference them ahead of the Tories (especially if they had how to vote cards). The same thing would happen with two round voting (like France) or supplementary voting (the system used for the direct election of mayors in the parts of England that have them). The LibDems (and their predecessors) would have done a lot better in the past if such systems had been in place. Thatcher would never have got such big majorities.
Yes, Labour has been quite weak in the South West, and tactical voting by Labour voters has helped the Lib Dems there as well. Off the top of my head I think you’re right Ben about Cornwall – I think both Labour and the Tories each held a seat there before 2005, so, in modern times at least, it probably was the first time the Lib Dems won all seats there.
Lib Dems do hold many seats by narrow margins over the Tories, so with the resurgence of the Tory vote I expect they will lose a number of seats. I’d also expect them to take a hit in Scotland, where having a Scottish leader presumably helped them to such strong results last time.
UK Polling Report was reporting a poll in Norwich North which had the Tories ahead, and the Greens still back in 4th place on 14%, just behind the Lib Dems on 15%. (Is it just something to do with my connection, or do others find their site very slow?)
Is there a date for the by-election in Martin’s seat yet?
On Cornwall my first thought was that Labour held a seat prior to 2005 and the Tories didn’t, then for some reason I thought the Tories had one as well, but I was right the first time – Labour had held Falmouth & Camborne.
There is not a date for the Glasgow North East by-election. I’ve heard rumours it will be in November.
I’m planning on writing on the by-election in Norwich North along with the Tasmanian Legislative Council by-election soon. One point I would make is that, while Norwich is a stronghold for the Green Party, most of the strong Green areas are in Norwich South. Norwich North only partly covers Norwich, the rest of the constituency is actually in the surrounding districts.
Sorry I’m approaching comment spam here.
With the colours I realised when you get to Northern Ireland you can also use red for the SDLP since they are part of PES and their MPs take the Labour whip. (and sorry I forgot the UUP had formed an alliance with the Tories, so yes, blue for them)
And since I brought it up, I thought I’d better save you the trouble of looking up the changes to the BCC wards for when you get around to changing that. The wards you have in red that should be blue are Enoggera, Holland Park, Jamboree, Macgregor, Marchant, Parkinson and Tennyson (assuming that is that you have the 2008 boundaries, which I assume you do because you say that on the link).
You realise it’s quite easy to change the colours yourself? Simply right-click on any object or folder of objects and you can change the colour, boundary style, opacity, etc, in any way you want. I probably won’t be updating the Queensland ward map any time soon.
With the UK colours, I probably will experiment with different colours as I draw the map. Ideally I like to keep them accurate (hence the SDLP being light-green rather than red) but the priority is to make each party distinguishable from each other.
Oh, thanks, I’ll shut up about the colours then and play with them myself.
Ben’s suggestion is what I have done with the files on my copy of Google Earth and I have the following for the non mainstream parties:
Plaid: Dark Green
SNP: Light Yellow
Independent: Light Grey
Respect: Dark Red
Greens: Light Green
UK Independence Party: Purple
These colours are those used by the BBC since Election 2005