Election mapping and reporting: Background

InstantAtlas dynamic reports are ideal for presenting election results and creating political and social atlases. The key feature of the product is its ability to create reports and maps at any geographic scale or coverage.  This allows local, regional, national or international organisations to deliver high quality, richly interactive outputs.

InstantAtlas is being used in this area for two purposes:-

• For the online public dissemination of election results through interactive reports. InstantAtlas reports are often pre-prepared, then published within minutes of election results being announced. These outputs are often termed election results maps or election results dashboards. They address the rising expectations of a citizen audience to view and interact with this data and are consistent with many of the interactive maps presented on mainstream news media web sites. Their ability to allow users to explore the data for themselves down to a localised level means they can engage communities and strengthen democratic processes. Our report templates are sufficiently flexible to handle a wide range of different voting systems including the appointment of multiple representatives per electoral district. 
• For the creation of socio-political reports and atlases that offer more analytical capabilities.  These reports may highlight patterns and trends in voting behaviour often in relation to other socio-economic and political factors.  For example trends in party voting over time for a specific area or the relationship between levels of household income and political party votes.  The reports are less time-sensitive while reporting geography may not be electoral districts – the data may be re-organised to present it at other geographic levels. This type of application is often supported by agencies responsible for publishing electoral and other forms of statistics.

The International Centre for Excellence in Local eDemocracy (ICELE) has recognised InstantAtlas in its category Election Results Publication Systems. 

See examples of Election Reporting and Mapping

NEW REPORT - Presidential Election Results Surveillance in the Democratic Republic of Congo

InstantAtlas helps city councils present 2011 local election data

As results from the May local elections in England are counted an analysed many councils have turned to InstantAtlas to help them explain the changes that have taken place. Presenting election data (showing which seats have been won and lost) in a visual format that is easy to understand is an important task for councils in their efforts to support local democracy.

Example No. 1 - Nottinghamshire City Council

Example No. 2 - Northern Ireland Assembly Election Results 2011

London Local Elections 2010, Greater London Authority

Scale:  Regional (London, England)

The Greater London Authority (GLA) is a strategic authority with a London-wide role to design a better future for the capital. It supports the work of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly in representing the interests of Londoners.

They used InstantAtlas to deliver easy to use, highly-interactive atlases for the Greater London local elections in 2010 at ward level

InstantAtlas provided a quick and easy, off-the-shelf tool for GLA to build interactive presentations of the results without using up valuable resources.

“We managed to get the election results out within a couple days which really shows the strength of InstantAtlas because there was a lot of data involved. Being able to present the data in a geographical format in such detail really helped us – it was a quick solution to reporting the results.”

Gareth Piggott, Senior Research and Statistical Analyst, Greater London Authority Intelligence unit

Read the GLA Story - 'How data visualization is helping the Greater London Authority meet its objectives'.

InstantAtlas video tutorial on how to present election results data in IA reports

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