That damned map...again ...on MSRNC

[SoCalDem]

They are trotting it out more and more// This was the 4th time I have seen in in 2 days.. It's all part of the .."oooh , it's gonna be sooo close".....and " Bush has the support of "most" of America"...

Dana somebody (she's with the bushcamp) went on and on about "how bush plans to define Kerry..and went on to show clips...of course NO ONE came on to show Kerry's take on anything..

Boy..it's gonna be a long spring, summer & fall :(

I wrote them.... as if it will help ...(not!)


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear MSNBC


JUST ONCE.. would someone PLEASE mention that the areas of BLUE just happen to coincide with the POPULATION centers of our country..

It is terribly misleading for the on-air-prompter readers/giggling adolescents to continue to misrepresent that "map"..

The red states are mostly populated with sticks, snakes, cows, rocks & dirt.. Granted, their "votes" did count more than people in the population centers, during 2000 election, but we all know how that happened..

A message to "Dana" who is traveling with bush.. The reason that this year seems to be so intense, is because over 50% of the people out here have NOT FORGOTTEN .. We are ANGRY, we are ORGANIZED, and we are DESPERATELY seeking a fair election this time around..

This election is more serious than any other before.. The future of the free world depends on it.. It is not a "game"..and I would appreciate it if the coverage of this election were treated with more than goofy comments and silliness.

xxxxxxx

and a PS..

The people around the world are NOT anti-American.... they are anti bush... There IS a difference..

When we travel abroad, we are received with cool indifference, UNTIL they find out that WE do NOT support bush...then we are welcomed warmly..

[ewagner]

1. Nice letter

doubt they will understand it.....

[lancdem]

2. It will be a long eight months

But the Kerry campaign is under no illusions about what they're dealing with.

[displacedtexan]

3. That must be Dana Bash.

Incompetent twit. You can watch her eyes and see that she's making shit up on the fly.

[Catherine Vincent]

4. I hate that bogus map!

The media and repukes like to show this map because it makes it seem like (in their mind) that most of America vote republican. Which is a damned lie. That is a good letter you wrote to MSNBC. Let's hope they pay attention to it.

[tridim]

5. Someone needs to redraw the map

with the states resized proportional to their populations. Could be a bit of a creative challege with the east coast states.

[stopbush]

9. As soon as you do that, they'll color the oceans and the Great Lakes

red to make up the difference!

[comsymp]

10. Here's one

Scroll to the bottom:
http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~sara/html/mapping/election/map.html

I've seen another one posted here at DU, tho it was a long time ago.

[Jane Austin]

11. Those maps . . . .

Those maps are wonderful.  Thanks so much!

[DoYouEverWonder]

6. They want to perpetuate the myth

that America is divided.

When you look at the actual numbers what you find is that in the 2000 election, within almost every state the vote was around 50-50. There is no such thing has a state that is mostly repug or mostly dem. They really need to change the map and show you the mix of red and blue within each state. What you will see is the map is really all purple.

[zbdent]

7. America is divided - between the 1 percent that own most of the

wealth, and the rest of us.

[zbdent]

8. Anytime that map is on screen, or any time that somebody is banging

the drum of "how close the race is", or especially if some slimebucket is gleefully declaring the Dem as DOA,

We need to keep that on tape. If there is any justice in the world, we will be able to throw that in their faces as Texas is left as the only state that carries Bush, and that was only because they stopped the recount.

[Oilwellian]

12. Here's a better map

The Map gets a better look:


We've all seen one. Sometimes by counties, sometimes by state breakdown. Of course I refer to the famous Red vs. Blue map. Many on the right use it as a fallacy-filled example of how much support Bush had in 2000. Evidently, by looking at geographical size, the amount of red somehow is supposed to legitimize Bush's election. Perhaps we have become too much a world of graphs - at a glance we are used to seeing depicted volume on a piece of paper or computer screen as a meaningful representation of something. Of course, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the difference in a homogeneous pie chart and a heterogeneous map - but it makes for great spin.

Of course, besides the population/area problem, the map implies an all-or-nothing logic. If a state is red, it implies it is 100% so. It implies the same about blue states. As anyone who ever followed politics knows, there is nothing that cut and dried. So let's eliminate some of the fallacies and take a closer look at the popular vote totals of the red and the blue states. Through multiplication of the percentage of votes per state, both blue and red, we can develop a more informational map - one with shades of purple. (I have added the Democratic and Green votes together and the Republican, Reform, and "Other" before dividing by total votes cast):


Where did all of the red go? It appears by this closer look that Democrats have a fairly decent nation-wide representation. Looking at this map, it is not hard to realize that the South isn't quite as locked-up as we have been led to believe. As seen above, in some cases it is very hard to discern what state went for whom in the last election. Is there much of a difference between MO and IA? There is on the top map, to be sure!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/01/08/27_map.html
(An excellent post from one of our own :D)