Geography has been at the heart of the 2010 General Election, with voting having taken place across the United Kingdom on Thursday 6 May.

In an article in Geography Compass, Johnston and Pattie propose that elections are a “geographer’s delight” (2009: 1865) with plenty of spatial data to be analysed and cartographically represented.  This got us thinking about what we might be able to find out: ‘Election time, geography time’, posted on Geography Directions, 8 April 2010.

This includes the key role of geographical data in how the political parties campaign targeted ‘key voters’, as well as shaping how the new boundary map of Parliamentary constituencies has changed to better reflect our changing population.   A post on the RGS-IBG website highlights some of the ways in which geography informs our understanding of the electoral system and voting preferences.

The BBC website has an interactive results map showing the results by region – you can drill down to electorate level for more detail.  During the course of the election campaign, the Guardian newspaper website had a series of interactive maps looking at the general election: Which are the safest seats in Britain? and Election map & swingometer.  In addition, there is a team at Sheffield University that undertakes exploratory mapping of British general election results using cartograms and other formats, while the Spring Issue of ESRC’s Society Now looked at the fairness of the electoral system.

Voters were bombarded with information and policies from all the political parties on how, when elected, they proposed to manage some of the most pressing geographical issues of the day, such as climate change, energy, migration, and our response to natural disasters.  If you were elected, how would you address these issues?

The ESRC Society Today website has series of resources on voting, looking at some of the factors people take into account when voting and how men and women might be different in what they look for.  In the lead-up to and after the election, the ESRC British Election Study team will try to describe and to explain why people vote, why they vote as they do, what affects the election outcome, and what are the consequences of elections for democracy in Britain.