Here is an interesting application of cartography to displaying a non-spatial data. Members of the Department of Geography at the University of Zurich have taken the results of 184 federal referenda from 1982 to 2002 and mapped them on three axis: liberal-conservative, left-right and ecological-technocratic. Read about and see the interesting visual result they've come up with. The map is all part of an Atlas of the political Landscape. Those of you who can read German might want to take a closer look at some of the other similar work that the two authors, Michael Hermann and Heiri Leuthold, have produced. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a detailed description in English of how they put this map together.