ElectioMap Explains
In-depth guides on how elections work around the world — from vote counting to electoral systems to reading results maps.
Written and maintained by Bartłomiej Paruzel · figures checked against official electoral authorities
Why Two Sites Report Different Turnout for the Same Election
Turnout is a fraction, and countries disagree about both halves of it. Norway ran two elections on one day and reported turnout five points apart — correctly, both times.
When a Referendum Wins 93% of the Vote and Still Fails
Two questions approved by more than 92% of those who voted, and neither is law. The mechanics of turnout quorums — and the perverse incentive they hand to the losing side.
How We Check an Election Figure Before Publishing It
Most published election errors are not typos. They come from summarising a table, mixing two denominators, or trusting a figure that was never reconciled — and each has a specific check.
What an Election-Night Data Feed Actually Looks Like
Behind every live results page is somebody else’s data feed. Three real ones — a protobuf blob, a broadcaster’s JSON service, and a portal that published nothing all week.
How We Draw a Constituency Map When the Geometry Doesn’t Exist
Countries publish administrative boundaries, not electoral ones. Building a constituency map means merging, splitting and occasionally admitting two districts cannot be separated at all.
What Happens When an Election Is Annulled
Courts occasionally undo an election. Three recent cases — a cancelled first round, an annulled run-off and a partial repeat — and what distinguishes a fixable flaw from a void vote.
Why We Don’t Call an Election From the First 9,707 Votes
For sixteen minutes our Iceland referendum page showed a verdict it had no right to show. An honest account of the failure, the fix, and a second mistake made trying to be careful.
Why Official Election Results Sometimes Take Weeks
The gap between the count you watch on election night and the result that becomes law — traced through São Tomé and Príncipe 2026, where the winner gained votes and lost share.
D’Hondt vs Sainte-Laguë: The Formula That Turns Votes Into Seats
Proportional representation is not one system. Running both classic divisor formulas over Kosovo’s real 2026 vote counts shows exactly where they disagree — and which one the country actually uses.
How Election Results Are Reported on Election Night
What "34% reporting" actually means, why early results are often misleading, and the difference between projections, preliminary results, and certified figures.
What Is the Difference Between Presidential and Parliamentary Elections?
How executive power is structured differently across the world, why forming a government takes months in some countries, and which system is actually more common.
How Electoral Systems Work Around the World
A practical guide to First-Past-The-Post, proportional representation, mixed systems, and two-round voting — with real numbers showing how each distorts or reflects the vote.
Why Election Maps Look Different From the Popular Vote
The counterintuitive reason a map can look almost entirely one color while the vote is nearly tied — and what election maps actually do and don't tell you.
What Is Voter Turnout and Why Does It Matter?
How turnout is measured, why it varies from 40% to 95% across democracies, and whether higher participation actually changes who wins.
How Live Election Data Is Collected and Verified
The journey from ballot box to published result: how electoral commissions gather, verify, and release official figures — and how ElectioMap displays them.
Why this blog exists
I'm Bartłomiej Paruzel, and I built ElectioMap to map national election results from official electoral authorities. Working with those raw feeds every week — commission CSVs, preliminary protocols, results that arrive at 3 a.m. — keeps raising the same questions: why does an early count look nothing like the final result? Why does a map painted almost entirely one colour describe a nearly tied vote? Why do two countries with identical vote shares end up with completely different parliaments? These guides are my answers, written from the practical side of handling the data rather than from a textbook.
Every guide draws on real elections covered on this site, so you can check each claim against the actual numbers: how Kosovo's 2026 parliamentary election turned vote shares into seats under the d'Hondt method, how Slovakia's 2026 referendum was decided not by Yes or No but by a 50% turnout quorum, or how Colombia's 2026 presidential race went to a second round. The guides explain the mechanics; the election pages show the mechanics at work.
New here? Start with these three
If you've just landed from an election-night search, start with how results are reported on election night — it explains why the numbers you're watching will keep moving. Then read why election maps look different from the popular vote before drawing conclusions from any map, including mine. Finally, how electoral systems work is the piece that makes every other result on this site easier to read.
What's coming next
The batch of guides published in September 2026 cleared most of the list readers had sent in: why official results take weeks, how a turnout quorum voids a referendum that won 93% of the vote, why two sites publish different turnout for the same election, and what an election-night data feed actually looks like. Still open: how seats are reallocated when a party splits mid-term, why exit polls and early counts diverge in predictable directions, and a piece on compulsory voting that does more than list the countries that have it. If there's a mechanism you'd like unpacked, write to me through the contact page — the best guide ideas so far have come from readers.