The Red/Blue Map is a Load of Hockey

[QC]

To put it politely, in accordance with the new rules (which I support, BTW.)

We all know that there are big variations in political support inside states, and we all understand how winner-take-all elections tend to exaggerate one or the other party's support within any given state.

We also all understand that vast, sparsely-populated expanses of desert and plains do not mean much in terms of population, which is how we vote.

That's why this map is the smart one, because it expresses the parties' relative support in shades of purple (remember from your old art classes, blue + red = purple) in accordance with each state's vote in the 2000 election.



So what does the real electoral map tell us?

[The Screaming Icon]

1. Black and Blue

It tells us two things:

1) The Electoral College sucks;
2) You make excellent maps.

Here's to hoping that it's a lot more bluish-purple this time around.

[Loyal]

2. I don't think he made the map

But it is a good map, I agree

[QC]

4. I didn't make the map, baby.

But I appreciate the compliment.

[bearfartinthewoods]

29. why does clicking on the image link initiate a download?

why can't it just be displayed or linked? i can't download on this computer.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

3. I totally agree

and I am betting we can take my purple state, Montana, in 2004.

[eileen_d]

9. Hi! Me too!

I live in the redder (eastern) half of Montana but I also have this hope. And how about a Democratic governor too? since Martz was such a "success story", LOL

[indigo32]

20. Go Montana

I'd love to see that happen (MT is near and dear to my heart)

[JCMach1]

5. I saw a red/blue map that resized according to population

It put things in the proper perspective.

[ShimokitaJer]

16. election results vs. population density

Election results:



Population density:



See a connection?

[NewYorkerfromMass]

17. only that southern New Hampshire is full of

Massachusetts hating idiots who hate paying taxes.

also, for the GOP to suppress Democratic turnout they are lucky in that they can concentrate their efforts into very small areas.

[Lisa]

18. what we want is an "equal-area cartogram"

What I teach my students, as a geography instructor ...

"Choropleth" maps (e.g. ones that color in the states on election day) are okay for certain purposes, but fall down badly when they assume that the state's AREA is linked with the variable being shown .... for election results, as people pointed out earlier on this thread, the key thing is POPULATION.

So you resize the choropleth map based on the population of various jurisdictions.



Done on a computer, so it looks less blocky:
http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~sara/html/mapping/election/map.html

It would be fun to do a map which altered the intensity of the color depending on population. Wyoming, for example, would appear as a purplish haze. The east coast would have more of a bluish tinge, and be much more solid (due to the higher population density).

[Mairead]

6. I note, though, that they're all portrayed as warm purples, which

doesn't seem to make sense. The states that went for Gore in a big way--there were some, weren't there?--should be shown as cool purples (like NY & Mass, only more so). Compare the legend spectrum to the states and they're mostly portrayed as though whether they went red or blue hinged on maybe 10 votes. As far as I know, that's not true--is it?

[NewYorkerfromMass]

8. That's right, and Nader votes should also add to the "blue" spectrum

This map is a good idea but poorly done. Also, if you don't win then you don't win. It's as simple as that. More productive endeavors would look at states like FLorida and NH and Iowa which could have gone either way. Detailed breakdowns of voting trends in those states would be more telling.

[JHB]

10. No, it was done properly...

...that's just how the RGB color balance settings work out.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

11. No it wasn't.

Or as some would say...Bullshit!

click on the OUTSIDE of this interactive color wheel

as you can see, the light intensity of the color palette used to make this map was (ahem) on the dark side. I suspect this is yet another product of the VRWC trying to (ahem) "muddy" the picture of Gore's winning the popular vote.

[JHB]

13. It wasn't made using CBMR...

...(Cyan, Blue, Magenta, Red), it was made using RBG (Red, Blue, Green).

Go to http://nebulus.org/index.html?pg=freebies/coders/palette/index.asp
and turn the dials there, using each candidate's percentage of the vote as a percentage of the 255-level intensity scale. (Red for Bush, Blue for Gore, Green for Nader)

[NewYorkerfromMass]

15. Wait a minute...there's no green for anyone

this is a 2 party exercise. I made mention of Nader only to indicate votes for the "left". The fact is the range of color in this map is limited and very ,very, dark, and I see fault with its execution.

[Mairead]

26. CBMR? Where's that from?

Printer colors are CyanYellowMagentaBlack

[Friar]

7. Hockey?

Don't go messin' with Hockey, boy. S'only sport they is!
Do you mean "...Load of Shit"?
Are you saying Hockey is shit? Eh? You hoser!
Don't make me come back there.

[Mike_from_NoVa]

12. Hey, Don't Badmouth Hockey!!!

If you mean crap, say crap.

[ShimokitaJer]

14. I'll hazard a guess that he meant "horse pucky"

Unfortunate, that a misstatement of a phrase from the south would so anger our ice-loving friends from the north.

Why can't we all just get along? <sniff sniff>

[donotpassgo]

19. So Bush is the King of the vast barren wastelands?

n/t

[greendog]

21. Vast barren wasteland?

What the hell are you talking about? I've spent time in all those states and never encountered a vast barren wasteland. Where is it?

[ShimokitaJer]

23. Try driving from Colorado to California sometime

I took many a road trip out to Cali during my time as a student at Boulder. And yes, I would characterize most of what I drove through as a vast, barren wasteland. Also a lot of gorgeous scenery, but quite a lot of desert in between.

I don't think any offense was meant, and you have to admit that coloring a huge, low population state like Wyoming for Bush and little bitty, densely populated place like DC for Gore has a visual impact out of scope with the reality.

[whirlygigspin]

22. media & geography

I'm wondering about all these rural areas that only get Rush, Rush
and more Rush.

Does this rural/urban divide reflect media somehow?

Me thinks we need a Pacifica station in Idaho.

[AntiCoup2K4]

24. Idaho? Fuhgettabout it

Nazis in the north, Mormons in the south. Iran will be liberal before Idaho!

[Ivory_Tower]

25. More accurately you'd want to consider "vote density"

I played with that map a long time ago, and tried to come up with a map that represented the voting population density of each state.
I used an RGB calculation with Bush=R Gore=B and Nader=G, and scaled the 0%-100% range to the 0-255 value settings for the color components.

This is what I got (ignore the messy artifact at the bottom right):



I also did it for the straight "Red vs. Blue" map (tying the intensity of the color to the number of votes of each state), and got this:




Either way, the election is pretty much a battle for Texas, California, and New York.

(Sorry about the size, but the original post was big, too, so I decided not to re-scale.)

[NewYorkerfromMass]

27. Great work

I want to see a map that only counts Bush and Gore votes.

[treepig]

30. I am interested in how you determined the "voting population density"

of each state.

for example, rhode island and new jersey are both much more densely populated than california, yet they have much lower color intensity on you map. why?

[Brian Sweat]

28. Two guys were flying around in a helicopter over Seattle.

The radio was not working and there was a thick cover of fog. The pilot wanted to land, but he had no idea where the airport was. They flew around for a while until they saw a building rising up above the fog. The pilot flew over to the building and hovered right outside of one of the windows until a man came over and opened it. The pilot asked the man if he could tell him where he was. The man replied that he was in Washington state. With that, the pilot turned due north, flew exactly 9.4 miles and promptly landed at the airport.

The passenger was amazed and asked the pilot how he figured out where the airport was from the man's answer. The pilot responded that the man's answer was 100% accurate and 100% useles, so the building must have been the Microsoft Developer Support center which is exactly 9.4 miles due south of the airport.



Your map is 100% accurate and 100% useless. The variations in the shades of purple are so slight that it is impossible to tell for whom the people in each state voted

[Ivory_Tower]

31. I think that's the point

The point of the "purples" map was to show that the lines are not as clearly drawn as the classic "Red vs. Blue" map would imply. There are Gore supporters and Bush supporters in all of the states.

That's what makes the map more useful than the "Red vs. Blue" map.

[Brian Sweat]

33. The point is invalid then. In Mass. Gore received almost

twice the votes that Bush did. In Texas Bush Recieved almost twice the votes that Gore did. There is clearly a stark contrast between the voters of Mass. and the voters of Texas, but this map obscures this contrast in a dishonest attempt to make it look like the two states have almost the same electoral make up.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

34. Exactly. Another way to do the map would be this:

assume 30% as baseline 0 (zero) for each candidate and assign it pure red or blue. Work the gradations between the 30 and 70% which then represent the TOTAL range of support. I assure you the map will then appear dramatically different.

Yet another way is to use straight percentages but instead of red and blue use black and white at each end (black for Bush of course) and the map will then appear as various shades of grey. And isn't that more reflective of the real world after all? :shrug:

[Ivory_Tower]

35. I don't get it.

The Texas map is a "redder" purple, and the Massachusetts map is "bluer" purple. That shows to me that there are differences between the two states, but that neither state is 100% in either column.

I still think the map is flawed, though. That's why I posted my variations in this thread. The starker contrast, IMO, is the number of votes in each state. Alaska could have gone 100% for Bush, but that would still have been a smaller number of votes relative to, say, California. Additionally, I blended the RGB components based on percentages for each candidate, which admittedly only made a subtle difference compared to original post, but I still think it's more accurate.

The Red vs. Blue divide completely dismisses the minority votes in each state, and feeds the impression that we (or "they") should write off whole segments of the country. I don't subscribe to that belief.

[Brian Sweat]

36. The Texas Map is slightly redder and the Mass map is

slightly bluer, but not nearly enough to represent the true devide between Texas and Mass. The two states are at opposite end of the political spectrum, but the map shows them right next to each other.

[treepig]

38. still, the number of votes in a state is not very meaningful,

considering that some states are much more densely populated that otheres - therefore the areas of greatest color intensity (whatever the color is) should correspond to where the people live:



larger version available at:

http://www.census.gov/geo/www/mapGallery/USPD-1990.html

[Catherine Vincent]

37. That's what I tell people when they pull out that red/blue map.

There are both Gore and * supporters in all states. Imo, that map is trying to divide this country even more than what it already is.

[Brian Sweat]

39. No, the map is trying to show who won the electoral college votes

in each state.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

32. That was, I'm afraid, the point of this exercise

it intends to minimize the geographic factions of the divide between Bush and Gore. I object to the bias behind the exercise since I see the divide as all too real.