Schematic Map of the UK's New Politics

Hot on the heels of the general election, Dotted Eyes has published a new way of charting the nation's political colours.

ParliaMap is a free data product for use with a Geographic Information System (GIS) such as MapInfo Professional. It portrays the make up of the House of Commons on Tuesday 18th May 2010 - the first day of the new Parliament which resulted in a coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.

The constituency of each Member of Parliament is represented as a hexagonal cell in a standard size, regardless of its true geographical extent. The arrangement of cells closely resembles the shape of the United Kingdom, making it obvious who has been elected in which part of the country. To emphasise those relationships, ParliaMap is supplied in the British National Grid coordinate system, though of course the geometry is deliberately distorted by using the same cell size for every MP.

The product includes a rich set of attribute data:

• Constituency Name
• Constituency Code
• Region (e.g. Northern Ireland, Yorkshire and the Humber)
• MP Name
• Party
• Votes
• Percent of Votes
• Previous Member (True or False)
• Percent Majority
• Percent Turnout
• Change
• Swing Lab to C
• Swing C to LD
• Swing Lab to LD

Jamie Justham, Dotted Eyes' Chairman, explains, "This style of presentation has previously been used in the media and online, but had never been available to GIS professionals. Many users need to produce this form of map and analysis so Dotted Eyes is offering ParliaMap free of charge as part of its OpenData policy."

To download ParliaMap, please login to the website and visit our Data Resources page.