Australian electorate maps - by poll/locality/postcode

[homelycooking]

I'm probably committing innumerable cartographic sins here, but:

I've started building maps of Australian electorates, approximating the boundaries of polling districts by the addresses and postcodes given by the AEC and plotting the 2PP results over each locality's conjectured boundaries. I don't scrupulously plot out the boundaries of neighborhoods by the street or block here - my intention is merely to give a sense of the basic political geography of a given electorate, even if the boundary lines between communities are very roughly plotted on the map.

Maybe this makes me look like a fool for overlooking something glaringly obvious (do please forgive a clueless Yank), but here we go:

Here's Wentworth:



and here's Eden-Monaro, still in progress pending final 2013 results:



Comments and critiques welcome, especially from Australians and Australian politics experts.

[Smid]

Cartographic sins? Nonsense! Great job! It if difficult to plot accurately because people can vote wherever they wish. I have done some similar work, and other sites attempted also. I'm responding presently on my phone, I may edit, or else respond more fully, once I'm at a computer. I may also be able to track down some other interesting information and sub-electorate voting results maps that have been made by officials. I have some on my computer, but there is one that I will need to look for first.

Great work, I would like to assist you where possible, and I have a few other ideas and suggestions that I'll discuss further shortly.

[Platypus]

Looks good! As Smid says, there aren't precincts as such so it's all indicative rather than factual, and so indicative borders is entirely fine. It'll be very interesting I'm sure

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Hmmm that actually makes sense for Wentworth, the most ALP-friendly areas closer to the city swung to MT, not a surprise considering how personal the vote is there - ALP held Darlinghurst and Wooloomooloo - but lost ground in Elizabeth Bay/Rushcutters and down into Surry Hills.

[homelycooking]

If I do enough of these, I could probably put together a composite map of Metro Sydney - maybe even of the whole of NSW. I'm also calculating the primary vote along these same lines for the purpose of making minor-party strength maps (especially of the Greens).

Any requests? I'd prefer to work on NSW for the time being, but I'd be willing to move elsewhere in Australia.

[homelycooking]

One more for the night. Kingsford Smith:



ALP hung on to Maroubra in 2013 by one vote.

[Talleyrand]

Could you do the Divisions of Richmond (NSW), Page (NSW), Robertson (NSW), and Dobell (NSW)? These are four seats I would be very interested to see the breakdown in, although I would be perfectly happy with waiting if you want to finish another project first.

Great work, btw.

[Smid]

This Victorian Electoral Commission newsletter from May 2009 is a few years old now, but I remembered an article on the back page, relating to geographically plotting the locations of addresses on the electoral roll (with Kororoit illustrated as an example). It's a bit like that racial dot map that was doing the rounds of here and Facebook a couple of weeks ago, but instead of the colour of the dot representing ethnicity, it represented a particular polling booth.

The point I am trying to make is that although there is no compulsion to vote at a particular polling place/station/precinct in the manner overseas, there are very definitely booth catchments, that become obvious when looking at this map. This implies that your rough intra-electoral boundaries representing booths, while possibly not perfectly aligning with booth catchments, will certianly be "somewhat accurate" and I think very useful. They will give us a good idea of areas of voting strength within electorates.

See also this website, which shows voting results in 2010 by polling booth for specific electorates, and also wider afield: "Melbourne Metropolitan", "Sydney Basin", etc. He uses dots to represent the location of booths, with larger dots for larger electorates, and shaded in a few different tones (less than we use here, but still better than a simple bi-chromatic "either red or blue" scheme).

You may also recall this map, that is in the Gallery, and that I've posted before:



I have it for the whole of the Greater Metropolitan Area (881 polling booths in total). It is presently just the 2010 state election results and booths, but I'll probably upload it here sometime after the state redistribution is finalised. I may start work soon on doing something similar for the federal booths.

Additionally, the federal Parliamentary Library prepares vote maps of electorates by CCD/SA1 (small statistical areas used by the Bureau of Statistics during the Census). My understanding is that the AEC provides details of how many electors from each CCD/SA1 vote at each polling booth, and the Parliamentary Library then creates the maps through weighted averages of booth results. The only problem is, each map is then shaded into... I don't know... quintiles, I guess - five bands, anyway, but each electorate has its own scale, so one map is not directly comparable to the next map.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Great stuff.

For an amusing one in NSW, try Farrer...

[minionofmidas]

I want Lingiari.

[homelycooking]

First map by request: Dobell.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

It's interesting that Dobell, Page and Eden-Monaro bucked the trend in 2010 by showing a swing to the ALP... and it looks like they're all gone.

[Smid]

Sophomore surge? All changed hands in 2007, after all.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Though it's pretty clear that Dobell would have been held were it not for... certain... things...

[homelycooking]

The whole of metro Sydney (24 electorates) in 2010:

[Smid]

Beautiful work!

[Wake Me Up When The Hard Border Ends]

Beautiful work!

homelycooking, when you get around to doing other states, could you please do Cowan (WA)?

[homelycooking]

I'm working on a complete state map of NSW right now. After that, I'll give WA a try.

[Wake Me Up When The Hard Border Ends]

I'm working on a complete state map of NSW right now. After that, I'll give WA a try.

Thanks, looking forward to it!

[homelycooking]

Well, here it is, at long last.

[Smid]

You are awesome. That is all that can be said. You are awesome.

[Smid]

Nimbin doesn't half stand out!

Also, I found Eden-Monaro interesting. I suspect that if these results were projected onto state boundaries, the result in Bega and Monaro would be flipped (compared to 2007, given the coastal Bega was Liberal-held, while the inland Monaro, which includes Queanbeyan, was Labor-held) and kinda-half-flipped compared to 2011 (given that both are Coalition held, but Bega substantially safer). Labor's vote in Eden-Monaro seems to be a belt connecting Queanbeyan, and then running East, and then South along the Coast. Perhaps Polnut or Hugh may have insights into this?

[Platypus]

Queanbeyan and Braidwood are very much part of the Canberran sphere, and the south coast might be a relatively progressive area for regional Australia due to retiring Canberrans, I guess, but it's hard to say.

Also, well done on the map, homely!

[homelycooking]

It's back, bitches! Anton Kreitzer has been waiting long enough.

Metro Perth 2010 (electorates of Brand, Cowan, Curtin, Fremantle, Hasluck, Moore, Perth, Stirling, Swan and Tangney)

[Wake Me Up When The Hard Border Ends]

It's back, bitches! Anton Kreitzer has been waiting long enough.

Metro Perth 2010 (electorates of Brand, Cowan, Curtin, Fremantle, Hasluck, Moore, Perth, Stirling, Swan and Tangney)

Thank you so much, looks excellent, it is so awesome to have a suburb-by-suburb breakdown map.