Elections and maps go together like peanut butter and jelly. Today’s offering, again for Global, is a look at the 2008 election covering the whole country in half a dozen or so maps. By-elections held in 2009 and 2010 are not shown. Margin of victory is shown through opacity: for example, a heavy dark blue depicts strong Conservative support, while a pale blue indicates a Conservative there won narrowly. All ridings have an individual graph showing the balance of support.

Controlling opacity turned out to be a better way of showing depth of support than a range of colours, and the darkest opacity level is still transparent enough. Each map has some comments about the region, some more than others.