Election 2019: A Dossier about Marginal Constituencies

Posted on by mhannagan
Marginals2017
A nice map of UK constituencies, where marginal constituencies  (majority of less than 5%) are shown in red.

Damn that election!

I was supposed to lovingly polish my video about Crime in the Home Counties, and then our government decided to call an election in less than six weeks time.

Some distraction, I can tell you. It’s a distraction because I have all the data I need to explore the various battlefields where nothing less than the future of the UK is being decided. Interesting times…

Luckily, I have the data ready, in a data import cube. I shared previously a map of who came second at the 2015 election, so I know the data set in detail. Thus, with a new dossier and my trusty custom constituency shape file, I was ready to find out which constituencies had Members of Parliament whose majority was the thinnest.

Hand on my heart, I swear that the dossier you are about to see took me no more than 15 minutes to put together. This is data exploration at its finest.

So, below, I have zoomed in on the northern Home Counties. The areas in red are those where the majority of the winning party at the 2017 election is the slimmest.

Marginals2017NHC
I know, there is a lot of the country to look at – but I live in this area, so there.

Now, for no other reason that this is of great interest to me, I am filtering the visualisation to only show areas under Conservative control:

Marginals2017NHCCons
By area, the Conservatives appear to control quite a bit of the country. Most of the population lives in towns and there, it’s a different story…

Clicking on an area shows you a tool tip with relevant information. And, of course, a Hyper card with crime and deprivation about the said area ! This is a bonus enrichment which can add a serious amount of instant insight to your discovery session…

Marginals2017NHCHyper
Hyper Intelligence ! It’s magic !

For additional info, I have added a linked grid showing the track record for the selected constituency.

Marginals2017NHCConsDetail
Erm – I hovered over another area so the majority is not that of the highlighted area. My bad.

I am not a psephologist. But looking at those marginal constituencies, and there are a number of them around the countries, you can see that factors such as turnout and, apologies for swearing, Brexit, are going to make this election very interesting.

At the very least, I have a tool that helps me put some context about the key battlegrounds where this election is going to be fought. If I find anything interesting, I’ll share it, while doing my best to remain politically neutral.