blue states, red states

[clauclauclaudia]

Yes, it's very frustrating as a "blue" voter (okay, I hate these terms, but they've become universal shorthand) to see the geographical map, on which red is super-abundant even in election years that are not this one. I like to double-check with maps like http://www.electoral-vote.com/carto/nov04c.html , which are proportional by population rather than by area.

I also like the map that postvixen put up, and her reasons for posting it. By and large, the "red states" aren't all that red and the "blue states" aren't all that blue, you know. Here's her post, and thank you to MSNBC.com and BoingBoing for the map.

I decided to combine the two and look at a purple, population-proportionate map. And it's behind the cut.

Note that I had to improvise DC, as it wasn't painted in the MSNBC original. But it went 90% Kerry, so that's about right.



Now I want to see the same thing by county. Anyone?

[No image? Try http://www.offhand.org/claudia/images/purple-proportional-map.jpg ]

[Edited 1/28/2012: for posterity, more and better maps at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2004/ and elsewhere on that site ]

Comments

[bunyip.livejournal.com]

That's a very interesting map.

[saxikath]

http://www.kieranhealy.org/files/misc/purple_america_2004_small.gif has it by county.

[clauclauclaudia]

Thanks. I only wish we could get *that* weighted by population. Heh.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Nice work! This map is not drawn proportional to population, but it shows you breakdowns by all U.S. counties:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/countymap.htm

[jheaton.livejournal.com]

I can't see the map. bantha.org is refusing the connection. *sob*

[clauclauclaudia]

Sorry, that's my friend's computer, it just crashed and the web server's not back up yet.

Alternate link for those curious enough to read the comments thread:

http://www.offhand.org/claudia/images/purple-proportional-map.jpg

[arsmith.livejournal.com]

I'm not really sure, but just eyeballing it, it seems that blueness is pretty proportional to population density. Or, rather, how compacted the people choose to live.

[clauclauclaudia]

Hey you!

Yeah. Blueness correlates a lot with cities/population density. That's how it travels up the Mississippi. And I think with colleges--I'm not sure what's going on in Alabama on those county by county maps, but I think that's it.

[arsmith.livejournal.com]

I've been on your friends list for months now. Figured you'd forgotten about me.

I'm not sure what's going on with new mexico in those county by county maps, myself. I'm starting to think all the liberals aren't stopped by the Raton pass and dribble down to new mexico.

[wolfheart17.livejournal.com]

My girlfriend (who is from Alabama) conjectures that the combined effects of:
1) de facto geographic racial segregation,
2) 25% of Alabama voters being African American
3) 91% of African American Alabamans voting for Kerry
could explain the county map in Alabama. This assessment sounds quite reasonable to me, but since I am too lazy to get all the statistics, will remain a hypothesis.

[cheshyre]

Wonderful! I was thinking of doing such a coloring job myself, but you beat me to it.

Would you mind if I posted this to riba_rambles? I'd copy the image onto my own server so not to mess up your bandwidth (not that I get *that* many hits).

Let me know, okay?

[cheshyre]

Forgive me, but I couldn't wait any longer to post this (I wanted it up tonight before I went to bed).
If you want me to remove the post or the image, let me know.

[clauclauclaudia]

That's okay, thanks for the nod!

I'd kind of like to be able to watch the weblog hits on the image for myself, but it's not a big deal either way.

[cheshyre]

Sorry 'bout that.
I swapped it to point to your server, so you should be able to see the hits henceforth.

[cheshyre]

And if you want, I can give you *my* sitestats on that image, in case anybody else picked it up.

[tinlail.livejournal.com]

Here is a interesting page

http://obsidianorder.blogspot.com/2004/10/red-and-blue-mapping-votes.html

[metasilk.livejournal.com]

a "blue" voter (okay, I hate these terms, but they've become universal shorthand)

I encourage you to, if you hate the shorthand, to refuse to use it. We don't have to adopt commonly-used terms to be understood, especially if the metaphors are either ridiculous or frame (http://www.changethis.com/5.GeorgeLakoff) a discussion in emotion terms we disagree with or find invalid.

[clauclauclaudia]

PDF download only? That's a lot of work for what is presumably text that could perfectly well be presented as html. (A pet peeve of mine.)

It's the terms red state and blue state that make the purple map powerful. I don't use them normally. I agree, how we frame discussion is important.

[metasilk.livejournal.com]

Agreed on pet peeve, although the structure of the essay suggests why they want it presented in a certain way. But not as accessible as it could... should? be.

Good point about red and blue making purple map powerful.

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

Excellent! Thanks. A very thought-provoking way of looking at the nation. And it undoes some of the overemphasis of northern states of the standard Mercator projection.

* is amused that Calif. comes out so square *

By county

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

over here!
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_11/005122.php (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_11/005122.php)