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

[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.