Cartographic Views of the 2024 General Election

The 2019 general election saw Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party achieve a sweeping victory in Labour heartlands. However, subsequent political upheavals led to three different Conservative Prime Ministers within the same parliamentary period. When Rishi Sunak, the most recent Conservative Prime Minister, called for a general election, it marked a significant moment to reassess the UK’s political geography. Influenced by years of Conservative infighting, the electorate responded with a landslide victory for the Labour Party under Keir Starmer’s leadership, visibly changing the political landscape.
This cartographic analysis uses three primary types of visualizations to assess these changes: geographic views, constituency views, and population views. Each offers distinct insights for a comprehensive understanding of the election results and their geographic distributions.

Geographic Views: These maps present data based on actual locations, showing where parties have won and highlighting regional voting trends. They are intuitive and correspond to real-world locations, helping readers understand how local issues influence voting behaviour.
Constituency Views: Commonly seen in media, these maps display each constituency as a uniform unit, such as a hexagon, avoiding spatial distortions from varying constituency sizes. They emphasize the distribution of votes and party support without the bias of large, sparsely populated areas, reflecting the equal weight of each vote.
Population Views: These maps scale geographic areas to reflect population size, highlighting urban areas with more voters and reducing the visual impact of rural areas. They offer a more accurate representation of voting power, showing how densely populated areas influence election outcomes.
Shown below are a series maps that go beyond depicting the winning party in each constituency, showing second-place candidates, vote shares, and overall turnout. Labour’s historic 412-seat majority with only 33.7 percent of the vote share is notable. Many constituencies were won by narrow margins, and the rise of smaller parties, capturing 42.5 percent of votes nationwide, is significant. Additionally, the election saw a historically low turnout of 60 percent, indicating voter disillusionment.
The 2024 general election has significantly reshaped the UK’s political landscape. While Labour achieved a landslide victory, Keir Starmer’s parliamentary majority remains fragile. The rise of smaller parties raises questions about the future dominance of the major parties in upcoming elections.