Paris Election Map, 1869

Cartographers have been trying to figure out how to best show election maps for a long time. Here in the United States, the typical county map can badly represent vote totals when large counties with tiny populations dominate the map. In 1860's Paris, a cartographer named Louis Montigny used this interesting approach to map the city's neighborhoods.

A square centimeter represents 1000 votes, with the political parties color coded. This clearly shows who won each neighborhood but also gives a great picture of how well each party performed. Yellow represents the governing party of Napoleon III, while opposition parties are colored blue, pink and red. Socialists are orange. Viewing the entire city, there are some pretty clear patterns of strength and weaknesses of the different parties.

As you approach the city's edge, the larger, less populated neighborhoods get the appropriate level of visual prominence.

I discovered this map on Cartographia, a blog has been inactive for many years. The blog post illustrates the historical importance of this map as it shows the beginning of the decline of Napoleon III's empire. His party was clearly losing popular support as shown by the absence of yellow on much of this map. Shortly after this election he began a war with Prussia in order to boost his legitimacy. The Franco-Prussian War was a disaster for France and spelled the end of the Second Empire. A detailed history can be found on the blog post.


See a large, high resolution version of the map here.