Maps, Maps, We Got Maps!

I know I’d basically decided to switch off commentary on elections and politics and such for now cause I kind of overdosed in the weeks leading up to the election, but this is about MAPS. And I love MAPS!

I’d seen most of these in other places in the last week, but this page nicely puts them all in one place:

Election result maps
(via Andrew Sullivan)

This starts with the tradtional red/blue state by state map and shows the county by county one too. But then also shows the cartograms for each (with the states distorted so their sizes represent population instead of land area). And then it ends up with the “purple maps” that show various color shades between red and blue to show the how the percentage vote really broke down rather than just straight red or blue depending on the winner.

The red and blue ones make one wonder if another civil war is something we should worry about since the differences seem so stark and to align so neatly with geographic divisions. But looking at the purple map you see that most places are indeed a healthy mix ideologically, with some places leaning a bit more one direction or another, but basically most places being basically “purple”.

Well, OK, if you look at the last map he gives, where anything over 70% in one direction is solid red or blue, it looks bleaker and more divided again, but lets concentrate on the purple map in the middle!

Also, I note he has left out both Alaska and Hawaii, as many people often do. Perhaps we should just shove both of them back out of the nest and let them go their own ways. :-)

But hey, funky cartograms!