Berlin's European Elections Map

Berliner Morgenpost's map of the European election results in Berlin

Yesterday I started writing a round-up of European election maps created by newspapers across Europe. However I was so disappointed with the general quality of the maps created that I quickly scrapped the post.

The one map that I was impressed with was by the Berliner Morgenpost. Europawahl 2014 Alle Stimmen in den 529 Berliner Wahlkiezen is a map showing the results of the European elections in each of Berlin's 529 election districts.

Like the Berliner Morgenpost's map of the German National Election the results in the European elections show that there is still a clear dividing line between voters in the old eastern and western blocks in Berlin


Berliner Morgenpost's map of the German national election results in Berlin

Almost 25 years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall the Berliner Morgenpost map reveals a political wall still exists between East and West Berlin and that this  political wall runs almost exactly along the line of the old Berlin Wall. To the east the Left Party emerged triumphant, while in the west the CDU and the SPD were the political winners.

The Berliner Morgenpost's European Elections Map is itself a really well designed visualization of the Berlin election results. The map provides a simple visualization of the overall winners in each electoral district in Berlin by shading each district with the color of the winning party. If you click on an electoral district on the map you can view a breakdown of the results for each party and you can also compare the 2014 results with the votes cast in the district in the 2009 European Elections.

The map also uses an effective polygon knockout effect to hide all of the map except for Berlin. If you want to recreate this effect with Google Maps you can use Vasile Cotovanu's polygon masking wizard Geomask. Using Geomask it is possible to create a doughnut type polygon which only shows the map through the hole in the doughnut polygon. The effect of using Geomask is to highlight the relevant area on the map and mask the rest of the map.

Another effective design element of the map is that when you click on an electoral district on the map a line is drawn from the district to the results in the map sidebar. It appears that the Berliner Morgenpost had discovered a neat method for drawing a polyline from the map to a static element outside the map.