CLOSE VOTES

Based on the 2012 parliament elections in The Netherlands, this visualization shows which cities distribute their votes similar over the political parties

VOTE SIMILARITY

In September 2012 we had national elections in The Netherlands. I was interested in exploring which cities vote similar. Using some statistics, I calculated the similarity of the distribution of votes between each of the cities in The Netherlands.

The visualization allows for switching between 2 layouts:

• radial: shows how different the distribution of votes for each city is compared to the selected city.
• geographical: shows a geographical representation of The Netherlands to get a sense of the distance between similar voting cities.

There are also 2 options for sizing the bubbles:

• population: larger bubbles are larger cities
• similarity: larger bubbles are more similar

Additionally, hovering over a city allows you to compare the voting result for this city with the selected city in the top left corner of the visualization.

The project is built using D3, and is best viewed with Chrome or Safari.

INSIGHTS

Some remarkable insights can be gained from this visualization, like:

• a strong geographic cluster around Eindhoven, but not Eindhoven itself
• Urk, the most religious city in The Netherlands
• The "Bible Belt", a group of religious cities

Eindhoven

Urk

The "Bible Belt"