A visualisation of voters’ choices in the Scottish independence and Brexit referendums has revealed that the country’s political landscape is more varied than commonly understood.
University of Glasgow researchers have analysed UK Electoral Commission data from the 2014 and 2016 polls to produce a cartogram - a map which uses distortions of area to reflect population size, and shades the areas to highlight differences in voting patterns.
The cartogram illustrates poll results from both referenda across the country, split into five regions based on boundaries drawn by the European Union’s Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics, which were also used by the UK’s Office of National Statistics until 2020.
Those regions - Highlands and Islands, West Central Scotland, North Eastern Scotland, Eastern Scotland and Southern Scotland - are coloured using a system which captures constituency voting patterns for "Yes" in 2014 and "Leave" in 2016 across the regions.
The cartogram shows a stark divide between Scotland’s biggest cities, with Glasgow and the surrounding regions’ constituencies coloured in blues or greens to indicate higher levels of support for independence and contrasting attitudes towards remaining in the EU.
On the east coast of the central belt, meanwhile, Edinburgh and its surroundings are largely coloured grey, indicating a stronger tendency to vote to stay in the UK and to remain in the EU.
Southern Scotland shows a more mixed reception to the polls, with some regions closer to the border in the cartogram shaded in pink and purple, leaning more clearly towards remaining in the UK while choosing to leave the EU. Other regions closer to the central belt are coloured in blue and green, reflecting their stronger support for the Yes and Remain votes.
In the North Eastern Scotland, Moray is purple-hued and voted close to the national average for independence referendum, but showed markedly higher support for Brexit. Across the rest of the region, the mix of colours from across the matrix show that voters were divided on both questions.
The Highlands and Islands appear most compressed on the cartogram because of their smaller population. Within the region, the Orkney and Shetland constituency stands out in pink, indicating relatively stronger support for opposing independence alongside the Leave votes, while much of the mainland is shaded blue, reflecting a different combination of preferences across the two referendums.
The cartogram is part of a paper published in the journal Regional Studies, Regional Science by researchers from the University of Glasgow’s School of Geographical & Earth Sciences.
The University of Glasgow’s Craig Stewart, the paper’s first author, developed the cartogram during the Visualisation & Map Use course of his Master’s Programme in Geoinformation Technology and Cartography.
He said: "In 2014, people in Scotland voted 55.3% in favour of and 44.7% against the question of whether Scotland should be an independent country. In 2016, 38% of the votes cast were in favour of the UK leaving in the European Union. In the many debates and discussions about those results since, politicians, commentators and members of the public have often treated those results as evidence of the preferences of the Scottish electorate as a whole. Urban areas are often thought to favour impendence and remaining in the EU, with rural areas taking the opposite view on both.
"What this cartogram reveals clearly is that the results of both referendums have significant local variations, which have often been masked by those broader national and regional analyses. We can’t simply treat Scotland or any region within it as a unified whole when the picture is much more nuanced than that."
Xinyi Yuan, a PhD candidate in Geospatial Data science and co-author of the paper, said: "Understanding voter behaviour fully requires analysis at across neighbourhood, city, and regional levels to properly capture social and cultural context. This cartogram helps bring that to life in a striking visual. We hope it will help encourage more awareness of Scottish voters’ diversity of opinion and inspire more nuanced discussion of Scottish politics in the future."
Dr Mingshu Wang, of the University of Glasgow’s School of Geographical & Earth Sciences, is the paper’s corresponding author. He said: "The University has a long history of teaching and research excellence in cartography. Over time, that has evolved into geoinformation technology, where we produce maps which can make a variety of data much more understandable and accessible.
"This cartogram was produced during an ongoing assessment as part of the in visualisation and map use course. It’s a testament to the quality of the work that it has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. It’s a great example of how maps can act as a bridge between disciplines by enabling a new perspective on politics in Scotland."
The team’s paper, titled ’ Scotland’s twin referendums: revealing regional divides behind national votes ’, is published in Regional Studies, Regional Science.
Data visualisation casts new light on Scottish political landscape
