Use cases

Worked examples of what the Parliament Chart is good at — the data behind each one, the fields to bind, and the settings worth changing. Each is a starting point, not a rule.

Ready-made datasets for several of these are on the Sample data page.

Election results

The chart's home ground: a chamber of a known size, divided between parties, ordered along a political axis.

Party	Seats	Sort Order	Colour
Green List	18	1	#5FB158
Progressive Alliance	41	2	#D8382E
Independents	8	3	#9C9C9C
Civic Union	33	4	#2B5FA8

Field	Bind
Party	Party
Seat Count	Seats measure
Sort Order	Sort Order
Custom Color	Colour
Tooltips	Vote share, change vs last election, leader

Settings: Arc 180, Legend Bottom center with Seat counts on, Show Total Seats on, Seat outline off.

tip

Put change since the last election in the tooltip rather than in the chart. A parliament chart shows a state, not a movement — the hover is where the "+7 seats" belongs.

Coalition and majority scenarios

Same data, different job: showing whether a group of parties can govern together.

Use Sort Order to place the parties you're testing next to each other, so the coalition reads as one continuous arc rather than two blocks with something in between.

Field	Bind
Party	Party
Seat Count	Seats measure
Sort Order	A scenario-specific order — coalition parties first
Custom Color	Colour, with non-coalition parties in grey

Settings: Arc 180, Show Total Seats on, Legend Right with Seat counts on.

Show the threshold beside the chart

The visual doesn't draw a majority line. Add a card visual next to it with a measure like:

Majority = INT ( DIVIDE ( SUM ( Chamber[Seats] ), 2 ) ) + 1

and a second card for the coalition's total. Click a party in the chart and both cards move with it.

Grey out the rest

A Colour column that returns the party's real colour for coalition members and #DDDDDD for everyone else turns the chart into a single, unmistakable statement. Swap the expression to test a different coalition.

Poll projections and seat forecasts

Projected seats rather than actual ones — a chart that changes on every refresh.

Field	Bind
Party	Party
Seat Count	Projected Seats measure
Sort Order	Sort Order
Tooltips	Polling range, sample date, margin of error

Settings: Arc 180, Legend Bottom center with Seat counts on.

Two charts, not two measures

Only one Seat Count measure is read at a time. To show current against projected, put two Parliament Charts side by side with the same Sort Order and colours — the eye compares the two arcs directly. A field parameter switching the measure in a single chart works too, if space is tight.

warning

Projected seats are usually fractional. The visual rounds to whole seats, so the totals of the two charts may differ by one or two. Round in the measure yourself if the totals must tie out.

A membership register

When each seat is a person you want to name — a board, a committee, a council, a delegation.

Seat ID	Member	Party	Constituency	First elected
S-001	A. Whitcombe	Progressive Alliance	Northgate	2019
S-002	R. Delgado	Progressive Alliance	Ashvale East	2024
S-005	M. Osei	Civic Union	Kingsmere	2015

Field	Bind
Party	Party
Seat ID	Seat ID
Seat Count	Seats = COUNTROWS ( 'Members' )
Sort Order	Sort Order
Tooltips	Member, Constituency, First elected

Settings: Arc 180 (or 120–150 for a small body, which makes the dots bigger and easier to hover), Seat outline on, Legend Right.

tip

Pair it with a table visual of the same members. Click a party in the arch and the table filters to that party's members — chart for the shape, table for the detail, and the table is what a screen reader will read.

Workforce, fleet or inventory composition

Nothing political about it: any breakdown where the individual units are countable and the total is meaningful.

Team	Headcount	Sort Order
Engineering	48	1
Sales	31	2
Support	22	3
Marketing	12	4
Operations	9	5
Finance	6	6

Field	Bind
Party	Team
Seat Count	Headcount measure
Sort Order	Sort Order
Tooltips	Location, average tenure, open roles

Settings: Arc 360 for a ring, Seat outline on, Legend Right center with Seat counts on.

One dot per unit, not per person

Above a few hundred dots the count stops being readable and the chart becomes a texture. For a headcount of 4,000, divide by ten in the measure — Headcount / 10 — and put "one dot = 10 people" in the visual's title.

Vote and survey outcomes

How a vote actually split — a shareholder resolution, a works-council ballot, a survey question.

Outcome	Votes	Sort Order	Colour
Strongly agree	214	1	#1A7F37
Agree	388	2	#57B45F
Neutral	141	3	#C9C9C9
Disagree	176	4	#E8A33D
Strongly disagree	81	5	#C4362A

Field	Bind
Party	Outcome
Seat Count	Votes measure
Sort Order	Sort Order
Custom Color	Colour

Settings: Arc 180, Legend Bottom center with Seat counts on, Legend Title on and set to Response.

tip

Ordinal categories like these are exactly what a parliament chart's contiguous ordering is for — always set Sort Order so the scale runs in its natural direction. A diverging colour ramp from green through grey to red reinforces it.

Capacity and utilisation

Occupied against available, as countable units — desks, beds, licences, racks, slots.

Status	Units	Sort Order	Colour
In use	178	1	#2B5FA8
Reserved	34	2	#7FA8D8
Free	61	3	#E8E8E8
Out of service	7	4	#C4362A

Field	Bind
Party	Status
Seat Count	Units measure
Sort Order	Sort Order
Custom Color	Colour

Settings: Arc 360, Seat outline on (the pale "Free" colour needs it), Show Total Seats on so the capacity is always visible.

tip

The centre total is the total capacity; hover any status to see its count. That's a whole utilisation dashboard in one visual — and clicking a status filters the detail table beside it.

Next steps

• Sample data — paste-ready datasets for several of these.
• Layout & arc — arc, ordering and the centre label.
• Formatting reference — every setting, with its default.