anatomy of a visualisationchris mcdowall

Library van polling booth in Vogeltown, 1950Evening Post staff photographer. Negatives of the Evening Post newspaper collection. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, NZ. Reference 114/145/13-G

Polling station for 2008 New Zealand general electionPhotograph by Simon Lyall. Wikimedia Commons.

1957 General Election results board, WellingtonPhotographer unidentified.

Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, NZ. Reference 1/2-101460-F

Crowd in Willis Street, Wellington, awaiting results of the 1931 general electionPhotograph by William Hall Raine. W H Raine collection.Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, NZ. Reference 1/1-004500-G

2008 Electorate resultsDramatic, Wikimedia Commons.

How does my neighbourhood vote?

Party vote counts by polling place, Auckland Centralhttp://www.electionresults.govt.nz/electionresults_2008/e9/html/e9_part8.html

To: enquiriesSubject: Geo-locations of polling stations Hello, I am writing to inquire whether it would be possible to obtain a copy of the geographic coordinates of polling stations. I am keen to map of the results of the last general election at the level of the individual polling stations. I see that the http://www.electionresults.govt.nz website publishes the addresses of polling stations. Is this information available in a format that can be used in a GIS (e.g. shapefile) so that it can be mapped. Alternatively, a table of the stations and their latitude, longitude would be fantastic. Please let me know if this is possible. All the  best,Chris McDowall

Subject: Geo-locations of polling stations Kia ora, Thank you for your enquiry regarding geographic locations of polling places.   Attached you will find a tab separated data file.  The file contains name, address, location, meshblock and accessibility data for the physical polling places used at the 2008 general election.  Geographic locations are given as Eastings and Northings in the recently superseded New Zealand map grid. The file does not contain locations of advance voting facilities or electorate-level “virtual polling places” for advance votes, special votes, polling places where less than 6 votes at were taken or votes allowed for Party Vote Only.  We cannot provide vote data for these virtual polling places at any level of detail finer than the whole-electorate level. The data are as used internally at the 2008 general election.  This is the best available information, but should not be considered 100% complete or correct.  You will note that a few locations and many meshblocks are missing from the data.   I hope this satisfies your requirements.

NZ polling station locationsElectoral Commission

NZ polling station locationsData source: Electoral Commission

Total number of votes

Party with majority of votes

Strength of majority

( National votes – Labour Votes )

Total number of votes

2008 Polling Station Party VoteAucklandData source: Electoral Commission

2008 Polling Station Party VoteChristchurchData source: Electoral Commission

2008 Polling Station Party VoteWellingtonData source: Electoral Commission

Is there a relationship between voting patterns and socio-economic deprivation?

NZ Deprivation Index 2006University of Otago School of Medicine & Health Science

NZ Deprivation Index 2006 – Areas below national median deprivation scoreUniversity of Otago School of Medicine & Health Science

Areas below NZ median deprivation1 and strong Labour party vote stations2

1) University of Otago School of Medicine & Health Science, 2) Electoral Commission

NZ Deprivation Index 2006 – Areas above national median deprivation scoreUniversity of Otago School of Medicine & Health Science

Areas above NZ median deprivation1 and strong National party vote stations2

1) University of Otago School of Medicine & Health Science, 2) Electoral Commission

have funchris mcdowall

@fogonwater