This post is slightly about easing anxiety I have about some mistakes I make, and also would make more sense if I had published it least 8 years ago when this blog was started. But it's also something that I would like to share with the world, even at such a late date as this. It's about drawing the boundaries of Westminster constituencies in N. Ireland. About 14 years ago I learned that the commission responsible for that was in the process of re-drawing them (first consulting with the local communities and then re-drawing them, etc.). They use wards kind of like Americans use precincts and I used the figures for ward population that they were using, and maps at a great site for N. Ireland elections and I re-drew them based on criteria that I felt were important.
(The map I drew is a little further below)
The embarrassing thing I want to get out of the way- I named one that I THOUGHT had a large Unionist majority "South and East Londonderry." I thought that with those demographics it was slightly appropriate and a harmless concession to them. In hindsight I think I was wrong about the demographics (and maybe using the word "South" as well) and am kind of embarrassed by it.
The criteria I used were:
1) Constituencies had to be within 5% of the electoral quota (what you might call the average size of a constituency). In the UK they're frequently well beyond 5% off and I think that's a problem.
2) With the exception of the three County Antrim constituencies that were pretty much brand new, if a constituency was above quota before, it was under in my map, and vice versa.
3) I thought the semi-urban area called South-East Antrim in the map below should be in one constituency instead of two bigger ones containing suburban and rural areas.
4) On a map of the old Dungannon local government district it looks like Coalisland is what MIGHT be called something like an immediate high-density suburb of Dungannon. Since I did this re-drawing I looked at a Google map of the area and it seems like maybe there's enough open space between Dungannon and Coalisland that it doesn't matter, but at the time I felt they should be together. Fermanagh and South Tyrone, right after Derry, was the second one I did and was earlier OVER quota, so kicking out Dungannon made a lot of sense, even though there may have been some housing on the outskirts of mid- and southern Dungannon on the wrong side of the boundary in my map.
Some other notes:
1) I think that the East Belfast and North Down constituencies are high-demsity enough that it's okay I split Newtownards in two.
2) I wish I had included all the wards immediately around Armagh, Ballymena, and Antrim, but those situations were less compelling than was the case with Dungannon and Coalisland (the surrounding wards were MUCH bigger than the town/city wards were).
3) In Newry and Armagh I improved it in that sense since I added Derryleckagh to the the high-density city wards of Newry.
I think that's about it. I might be doing this sort of thing in the next several weeks as they're doing another re-drawing of the boundaries.
Tom
The map below is a heavily altered version based on one found here.
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