Introduction

Elections, as Peter Taylor (1978) once noted, are a geographer's delight, particularly for one who is interested in the quantitative display and analysis of large data sets. Votes at general and other elections are cast in places and counted in places, and under some electoral systems the result of the contest is determined by the number of votes cast for different candidates/parties in different places. It is thus a straightforward task to map the geography of voting, thereby demonstrating, for example, spatial variations in support for a particular political party or, as with referendums, in political attitudes. Elections are inherently geographical phenomena.

Having mapped an election result, the next stage is to analyse it, to suggest reasons for the observed pattern ...