You know I love maps. Here’s one I’ve been waiting to see for the past couple of days. Created by Robert J. Vanderbei of Princeton, it’s a county-by-county election map, shaded in gradations of red (Republican) and blue (Democrat), which ends up rendering much of the U.S. in purple, rather than just the two familiar, stark colors. (Link via Glen Engel-Cox.)
Another map, which appeared in the Post, combines a bar chart and a map to display the margin of victory in each county. The higher the bar, the more decisive the outcome. It shows that Bush’s winning counties were spread out across the country; while Kerry won in fewer counties, his margin of victory was sometimes much greater. (Link via genehack’s comment on Now This.)
Yet another kind of map I like scales geographic areas to population, or in this case, votes. The Times has one like this in its election results (requires Flash; under “view map according to:” click on “electoral votes”). See also a couple of features on Jonathan Corum’s style.org, where he maps out the Iowa caucuses and last year’s special gubernatorial election in California, scaling counties according to votes and shading according to candidate.
Geeks unite!
Those are very cool maps; thanks for sharing those. I’m a geek! :)
I like maps, too. I was actually thinking of making one with the county-by-county results. Glad I don’t have to, lol! Most of the maps are way too red - I like this distorted map designed to reflect the votes based on population density:
http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/286.html
cheers,
- tomg