This polygon shapefile contains the constituency boundaries for the cantons of the Poitou-Charentes region of France in 2010. Cantons serve as constituencies for the election of the members of the representative assembly (General Council) within each department of France.The role of the canton is to provide a framework for departmental elections. Each canton elects a person to represent it at the conseil général du département – or general council for the department, which is the principal administrative division of the French Republic. This dataset is intended for researchers, students, and policy makers for reference and mapping purposes, and may be used for basic applications such as viewing, querying, and map output production, or to provide a basemap to support graphical overlays and analysis with other spatial data. Articque informatique. (2010). Cantonal Electoral Constituencies: Poitou-Charentes France, 2010. Articque informatique. Available at: http://purl.stanford.edu/bk055yk9861 This layer is presented in the WGS84 coordinate system for web display purposes. Downloadable data are provided in native coordinate system or projection.