Maps and cartograms of the 2004 US presidential election results(some new maps)

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/ ^ | 11/7/04 | Michael Gastner, Cosma Shalizi, and Mark Newman

[My2Cents]

Looks like the U.S. on drugs.

[Mo1]

The authors have also done a good job in better differentiating the colors in the 'purple map'.

The authors are trying to prove the country isn't more conservative

[Conspiracy Guy]

Quit showing dirty pictures.

[Diddle E. Squat]

ping

[feedback doctor]

"Them looks like hog jowls." - Jethro Bodine at army induction

[benice]

SOME OF THOSE MAPS LOOK LIKE A 'FISH'.

[Mr. Silverback]

So...it appears they have to literally twist the map to make it look like it wasn't a clear majority.

And what's with this:

In this map, it appears that only a rather small area is taken up by true red counties, the rest being mostly shades of purple with patches of blue in the urban areas.

What's their definition of a "truly red" county? 80-20? The bottom line that these guys don't want to admit is that except in a few states (Iowa, for instance) the candidate who took the state did so by a clear majority of 2-5 points or more. It wasn't really close anywhere that would have changed the balance, so the real sense of the election really is contained in the state-by-state and county-by-county maps. Probably the blue and red would only shift a bit if we could show precincts, with a few tiny blue spots in the red counties and a few tiny red spots in some of the blue counties. For example, my precinct went for Kerry by 30 votes (which I credit to the polling place being in a low-income senior housing project) but my county went for Bush by 10% and my city by a smaller but clear margin.

[paulcissa]

I think I'm going to be sick......

[Mr. Silverback]

So...on that map...white is 50-50?

[Chad Fairbanks]

They look like blobs you'd find in old hippie music videos from the 60s...

[Diddle E. Squat]

It is just another layer of analysis. The next step would be to do cartograms for previous elections, especially those considered landslides, for comparison. The difference between political 'landslides' and close elections is relatively minor when mapped this way.

[beezdotcom]

So...on that map...white is 50-50?

This one actually skews it a little bit, so even 50.001% takes on a definite color.

[Chris_Shugart]

Though statistically valid, this is liberal equivocation intended to keep the "America is polarized" myth alive. It's time to use words like "individuated," "dissconnected" and "disassociated" when discussing the current condition of "Blue America."

[smith288]

[dangus]

I see someone already made a Dali reference. But the first thing I thought of were Dali's grotesque, contorted figures. By the way, this map is BS. It shows Mississippi (5 representatives) as almost the same size as Illinois (19) and larger than Missouri (8 or 10, I forget)

[Southack]

"The cranky cheerleaders won't like some of these, but the cartograms are both interesting representations and more accurate in some ways. Like it or not, 51% to 48% is somewhat close and also reality. At the same time, 51% is also greater than the majority, and politically a mandate."

Those cartograms are somewhat interesting, but not nearly as useful as a comparison of the Red-Shift from 2000 (really, from 1994 on) to 2004.

A more dynamic map would show the *trend* to the Right as well as the geographic distrution of votes.

That's what is killing the Dems right now, the trend. If we run Senator Rick Santorum as our VP candidate in 2008, for instance, Republicans will add the state of Pennsylvania to the Red column. Wisconsin will probably go our way, too. If we run Rudi Giuliani as our VP candidate, then we'll take New York from the Dems.

To even be competitive, the Dems will have to shift to the Right to have a shot at flipping a Heartland state (e.g. expect Virginia's Governor Warner to be a front-runner for the Dem nomination in 2008).

If they buck the *trend*, then we will again crush them by re-winning all of our 2004 red states again in 2008. They can run Hillary, Kerry, Gore, Dean, Dukakis, even Rockefeller in 2008 and they won't flip any Red States over to blue. That means that they lose, again (and again, and again).

So what you want from a more useful map is *not* the cartogram so much as a trend-o-gram. Show where the Red-Shift is currently located and which direction it is headed.

[x]

Nice article, but in politics 55% nationwide has come to be considered a landslide. 60% in a presidential race is a rarity, and 50% + 1 vote has been hard to get lately.

Introducing a new map may convince people that the election was closer than other maps indicate, but in the end it means little unless you apply the same mapping to other elections through history to provide a context or background against which we can evaluate last week's result.

[Chode]

of course he left the most important maps for last... showing counties that are 70% or MORE for Bush!!!

they always leave till last what they don't want to tell you.

[add925]

Hey libs:

Any Questions?

[LTCJ]

Looks like the U.S. on drugs.

Blue being the deoxygenated portion of Our Brain.