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.

[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*

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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)