A Red/Blue maps for Canada?
December 3, 2008 9:25 AM   Subscribe

Are there any Canadian federal election maps out there, coloring each federal riding by the winning party? I am thinking something like the Red/Blue coloring that is often done in the US (like this), but preferably something with intermediate colors (like this).

With the current political crisis in Canada, I have become curious about the regional political divisions which are being brought up. While it is clear that the Conservatives have strong support in the prairies, and that the PQ have strong support in Quebec, it would be nice to see a map that colors each riding.

I have found some maps here, but they only go up to 2006. Given the litany of Google maps mashups for the US elections, are there any similar things for Canada out there?
posted by TheyCallItPeace to Law & Government (6 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
The CBC still has their election page up, and there's a Flash-based map about halfway down the page. It's not done with intermediate colours, but it's a start.
posted by Johnny Assay at 9:34 AM on December 3, 2008


Also, the official maps from Elections Canada (PDF.)
posted by Johnny Assay at 9:35 AM on December 3, 2008


I came here to recommend the same map as Johnny Assay(CBC). I don't think an intermediate colour map would be very readable in Canada. With five parties gaining a significant percentage of the vote, once you assigned each party an individual colour, you'd end up with every riding coloured in some murky shade of brown. You could make a map by placing the parties on a left/right continuum, but it would be difficult to represent the positions of the Greens or the BQ accurately.
posted by ssg at 9:40 AM on December 3, 2008


Best answer: The problematic thing about Canadian politics is that there are five parties in play; in my own riding (in Quebec), all five parties got five percent of the vote or more. This isn't something that can be portrayed on a single, purple choropleth map; you need multiple maps to demonstrate each party's regional support.

In one of my Map Room posts (self-link), I pointed to a couple of projects along these lines: these Google Earth layers; and, for the Greater Toronto area, maps of each party's support, turnout rates and second-place parties plus margins of victory.
posted by mcwetboy at 9:46 AM on December 3, 2008


Response by poster: I guess I will have to look into ho hard it is to make one's own Google Maps mashup.
posted by TheyCallItPeace at 9:47 AM on December 3, 2008


Response by poster: mcwetboy: thanks for all the links! I like the suggestion to look at the local support for each party.
posted by TheyCallItPeace at 9:57 AM on December 3, 2008


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