Friday, June 07, 2019

The Danish Election Map


The Danish Broadcasting Corporation 'DR' has created a very impressive data visualization of the results from the 2019 Danish Election. In the election the 'red bloc' emerged as the largest coalition of parties, defeating the 'blue bloc'. This means that the Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the leader of Venstre, has lost power and that the new Prime Minister will be Mette Frederiksen
of the Social Democrats.

DR's election visualization breaks down the population of Denmark into millions of colored dots. These dots are then animated into different map visualizations to reveal how Denmark voted. Each dot represents 25 Danish voters and the colors of the dots represent the different Danish political parties. A number of different maps are used to show the nationwide support for each of the individual parties. This reveals some interesting geographical patterns in support for the parties. For example the Liberal Party have support across urban and rural areas, while support for the left-wing Red-Green Alliance party tends to be concentrated in the big cities.

The visualization goes on to show the party who won the most votes in every polling station in the country. When the polling stations are colored to show the party with the most votes the map shows that either the Social Democrats or Venstre were the most popular parties across nearly all polling stations. The right-wing Danish People's Party were the most popular party at only one polling station in the country.

As you progress through the story the map changes to show which political parties made the most progress since the last election (and where) and which parties have lost ground since the last election (and where). For example the extreme right-wing Danish People's Party lost vote share at nearly every polling station across the country.

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