Visualising the results of the By Elections

Here's a graphical comparison based on the last election and the by election for Meath and for Kildare North.

Meath Election Results 2002	Meath By Election Results 2005

Kildare North Election Results 2002	Kildare North By Election Results 2005

Inspired by work for the US 2004 election (see also) on visualisation of election results and also work in the UK on the same topic. Here’s a comparison of the latest Dail by elections and the previous results for the 2002 Dail election.

Here’s the short explanation:
Fianna Fail is green, Labour or Independents are red and Fine Gael is blue. A primary coloured seat (red, green, blue) is a seat dominated by one party, while a secondary colour seat (yellow, magenta or cyan) means a hotly contested seat. Wikipedia has informative page about the Red-Green-Blue model of colour (as opposed to Red-Yellow-Blue), and the differences between the additive and subtractive colour models, if you want to find out the mechanics behind these methods.

Interpreting the graphics we can see that in both elections the green tones (or Fianna Fail overall percent) have suffered as the swing to other candidates is indicted by the colour change. The results used were those of the final count in both elections.