50 Equal States

Tired of little states being over-represented in the Senate? Do you wish that all states had equal electoral vote power in national elections? Neil Freeman at Fake is the New Real has a solution. Redraw all fifty states so that they have relatively equal populations:



Interestingly, the only state that gets to keep most of its original shape is Missouri. Does that mean the Missouri already has the "perfect" population to represent 1/50 of the US population?

Via The Map Room

2008: The Year in Political Geography

Patrick Ottenhoff's political geography blog, The Electoral Map, was my favorite site this past year for electoral maps, county voting projections, and interesting commentary.

Here, he has pulled together a mappish Year in Review for 2008:

2008: The Year in Political Geography

View more presentations from PatrickOttenhoff.

Mapping the 111th Congress

FiveThirtyEight.com offers a nice cartogram of the new congress:



Not suprisingly, most states have some red and some blue. There are nine "all blue" states, and five "all red" states. However, while Oklahoma did allow one congressional district to go blue, the Oklahoma Republican Party was proud to point out, in their e-Christmas card last month, that they were the only state where every county went red for McCain:




HT to Patrick at The Electoral Map

A Ballot Buddy System

No, this has nothing to do with same-state marriage... Although these two would make an odd couple...



Randall Lane has an op-ed piece in today's New York Times about how to reform our electoral college system of electing a president, without amending the constitution.

Election theorists talk nobly of moving America’s presidential election to a popular vote, but that would require a Constitutional amendment. Swing states would never pass it, because it would mean giving up their influence. Neither would small states, which have a disproportionate influence in the Electoral College. But if every state apportioned its electoral votes as Maine and Nebraska do — one for each Congressional district, plus two for the overall state winner — millions more voters would suddenly become worthy of the candidates’ attention.

The way to make it happen, says Lane, is to get similar sized "red and blue" states to use the "buddy system" and take the plunge at the same time. That way, there would a less dramatic shift in electoral results. At least perhaps in the early going.

A change such as this would go a long way towards the ideal of truly having every vote counted and every vote courted.

#310

Last Word on 2008 Electoral Maps

The presidential electoral season brought so many interesting variations of the electoral map, I have resisted the urge to post them all here. So, as a goodbye to the 2008 election, I'll just post these two.

The Economist polled their world-wide readers: What if the whole world could vote in the U.S. election:


I suspect these results confirm the suspicions of both Democrats and Republicans. Democrats are pleased that we will have a president that most of the rest of the world likes, and Republicans see Obama as the favorite of terrorists and socialists... (Although, I'm not sure how that explains Cuba going for McCain...)

Leave it to The Onion to carefully explain the electoral results:

Purple States of America 2008

Mark Newman has already come out with his 2008 Election Cartograms. (Last year I highlighted his 2004 Election Cartograms.)

Take the standard electoral vote maps we have been seeing since election night, and adjust the shape and size of each state for population and you get this:



It gives some real perspective on the size of Barack Obama's electoral vote landslide. However, as we know, in many of these states, the popular vote was very close. Re-color the map to show how the counties voted; strongly for Obama is dark blue, strongly for McCain is bright red, and shades of purple for everything in between...



Once again, the nation is bruised, but carries on...

UPDATE

Declan Butler has his own calculations for a population cartogram. He also includes Hawaii and Alaska (that sort of looks like a squashed bug...)

Ice Electoral Map

Just as they did in 2004, NBC News turned the ice rink at Rockefeller Center into an electoral map:



A video can be seen here on Gawker.com

What Time Do the Polls Close?

I just love how elections produce all kinds of colorful maps!

Via The Daily Dish

Paint the States Red or Blue

With less than two weeks until the United States general election, cartophiles cannot help but be interested in electoral maps. Everywhere you turn every news source and blog is speculating on which way each state will go... red or blue. My favorite articles also use clever map graphics to illustrate their point.

Salon.com had two recent articles by Walter Shapiro, with "red or blue" paint illustrations.

Why is Barack Obama now electable? "From the youth vote to Sarah Palin's outdated embrace of the rural mystique, Salon's panel of demographers and consumer trend experts talks about how America is changing."

Turning Indiana blue "Put off by the McCain-Palin ticket, suburban Republicans are backing Barack Obama -- who might score a rare Democratic win in the Hoosier State."

It is also fun to speculate on different electoral outcome scenarios, including possible ties! CNN.com offers this interactive electoral map:



Other sites that let you calculate alternate electoral vote results:

270towin, Washington Post, Real Clear Politics

Campaign Ad Spending

Where are the candidates spending their money on advertising?

The New York Times has an interactive map that allows you to see just how much the Obama and McCain campaigns are spending in each market.



Obama appears to have given up on Utah and Idaho... and why is McCain spending any money in markets he has locked, or cannot be expected to win?

Via The Electoral Map, one of my favorite sources for electoral mapping and analysis.

What? There's another election going on in North America?

Last night, Steven Harper, and his Conservative Party, won a larger minority in the Canadian House of Commons. I don't pretend to know a lot about Canadian politics. When I lived in Michigan, and could listen to CBC Radio out of Windsor, I enjoyed following the ebb and flow of this multi-party democracy. In fact I envy the fact that Canadians actually have more than two real choices. I'd love to see a viable third-party in this country, but our system is rigged against it. (But that's for another discussion.)

Anyway... The CBC posted this excellent interactive map. It allows you to zoom in on the provinces and on specific Ridings to see how the vote came out in each individual MP race.



Even though Harper's party earned more seats in Parliament than last time, they still do not have a majority and must forge a new coalition with another party or parties. This may not be an easy coalition to hold together. We may see yet another Canadian election before the required four years...

Via The Map Room

Competitive Counties

Robert David Sullivan, from Beyond Red & Blue wrote an op-ed piece last week for the Boston Globe.

In "Changing the polarized electoral landscape" Sullivan discusses the shrinking number of counties that are truly competitive in presidential races.



The gray areas on the maps are counties with a margin of victory less than 10 points. The other counties went strongly one way or the other... I am skeptical about Barack Obama's campaign plans to redraw the political map with a "Fifty State Strategy". If he can do it, then perhaps we will see more gray on the 2008 Competitive Counties map.

What does that map say about who we are and where we live? does it mean that most of us vote the way we do because of where we live, or do we choose to live where we are surrounded by people that have similar political views?


#212

Appalachia for Hillary

In his article, Pennsylvania Confirms Hillary’s Appalachian Prowess, The Electoral Map blogger, Patrick Ottenhoff, illustrates the popularity of Hillary Clinton throughout the Appalachian region of the United States:



Ottenhoff concludes:

North Carolina, West Virginia and Kentucky have yet to vote, but if the electoral maps of the rest of Appalachia are any indication, Hillary can expect huge wins in the Appalachian pockets of these states.

Read the full article for more analysis and electoral maps.

Appalachia, as it is defined in the map above, is one part of the larger electoral region of "Cumberland", as defined by Beyond Red & Blue. Are these not the "blue-collar Reagan Democrat" voters that the Democratic candidate will need to win the White House?

In a conversation, after the Pennsylvania Primary results were known, an Obama supporter said to me (in jest) that those "inbred hicks" were responsible for Clinton's win. Yet, isn't that the sort of "elitist" attitude that brought on the controversy surrounding Barack Obama's "bitter" comments? This is an area of concern that Obama and his campaign must address if they hope to prevail in November (not just a couple weeks from now in North Carolina and Indiana).

Cartophilia will not become a politics blog, but political maps often catch my eye when they contain telling information. Feel free to comment below and tell me how I'm full of it...

Ten Nations of the United States

In an earlier post I discussed Joel Garreau's The Nine Nations of North America. In 1989, Garreau took a look at North America, erased all of the international, state and provincial borders and redrew the lines around regions that have common interests in culture, politics and and industry. This way of looking at regional interests, that transcend state and national boundaries, forever changed my understanding of those regions.

The folks at Beyond Red & Blue, a political blog, have updated this concept, using election data:

Beyond Red & Blue" was conceived about four years ago, in anticipation of the 2004 presidential election. The idea was to divide the United States into 10 regions of equal voting power, each with a distinct history and political bent... Keep in mind that for at least 60 years, no one has ever been elected president without carrying at least five of these regions.

The original article with the 2008 map was posted in September 2007, and last week offered more detail on What went into deciding the 10 regions. It is hard for me to think of myself in Western Ohio, and people living in Indiana or Illinois as having the same identity (Cumberland) as the folks in Appalachia, or that people in the San Joaquin Valley of California are part of the same voting block as North Dakota... But this approach to an electoral map is fascinating nonetheless.

Via The Electoral Map

Political Cartography 2.0

The Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet is hosting its annual Politics Online Conference this week in Washington, DC. Patrick Ottenhoff, publisher of TheElectoralMap.com, will be speaking on the Political Cartography 2.0 panel. He has already blogged about two of this topics:

Politics Online Conference: D.I.Y. Maps
Politics Online Conference: Cartograms


I'm looking forward to additional posts on his presentation, and the maps he will share.

Democratic Dream Mug

Happy Birthday to me.

My birthday present to me is this coffee mug. Starting with the 2004 electoral map, I can watch every red Rebublican state turn Democrat blue while I enjoy my favorite hot beverage.

I ordered mine from The Funny Times, however, you can find it online from many other fine Internet merchants, including Wickedcoolstuff.com and Stupid.com (the latter includes a flash animation of the mug's tranformation).

South Carolina

South Carolina has experienced its 30 minutes of electoral fame for this election cycle. Fifteen for the Republican Primary last week, and fifteen more for the Democratic Primary yesterday.

Our friends at The Electoral Map have gathered some geographical analysis of the Republican Primary (and more here) as well as the Democratic Primary.

However, the map image that really caught my eye was this analysis of Barbecue Regions. Mmmm, Barbecue... (must be lunchtime...)

• The State of South Carolina is known as the "Palmetto State".
  
• The Battle of Kings Mountain marked a turning point the the Southern Theatre of the American Revolution.
  
• It was the first state to secede from the Union in 1860 and the American Civil War began when Confederate batteries began shelling Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.
  
• The state's stubborn worship of the Confederate battle flag still causes controversies and boycotts.
  
• However, the official state flag is a fine design. No boring "Official Seal", although the palmetto tree may violate Josh Parson's Rule #2a of Flag Design (Do not put a picture of anything on your flag).
  
• Your fearless cartographic correspondent has many ancestors from South Carolina, and still has many cousins living in the Piedmont, or Tomato Barbecue Region.

Here is a map postcard of South Carolina from my collection:

The Politcal Clout of Fairfax County, Virginia

The Commonwealth of Virginia has been a fairly solid Republican state from many years. However, in response to President Bush's "unpopularity", Democrats gained control of the State Senate in last Tuesday's voting.

See: The Washington Post's Virginia Post-Election Roundup

In my previous post, I pointed to maps that demonstrate the cartographic "lie" of the national electoral map. Here, in yet another interesting map blog, The Electoral Map, Patrick Ottenhoff points out that the shift in State politics can be attributed, chiefly, to a shift in the voting pattern of the most populous county in the state: Fairfax County, suburb of Washington, D.C.



This map demonstrates the population of Fairfax County, relative to the rest of the state.

The Purple States of America

In How to Lie with Maps, Mark Monmonier discusses how maps can give false impressions. A perfect example of this is the map of the United States used to show "popularity". Many of the physically large states in the West have relatively smaller populations than the "smaller" states in the East.

Michael Gastner, Cosma Shalizi, and Mark Newman of the University of Michigan make an excellent demonstration of this cartographic "lie" with their analysis of voting in the 2004 Presidential Election. Some sample maps:

To look at a standard electoral map of the United States, it would appear that a significant majority of the nation is "red", or voting Republican. Look at all the "red" on the map!:



However, if you make a population cartogram (adjusting the size of the states by their relative population) you can see just how close the election really was:



Yet, is Ohio really all red, and Michigan really all blue? Of course not. So if you color the nation county-by-county, and give those counties different shades of colors between red and blue, based on how strong the vote was, you get something like this:



So, basically, after the 2004 election, the nation was one big bruise...

Read the full analysis and progression of 2004 presidential Electoral maps, or the author's breakdown of the 2006 Congressional elections, or more fun with international socio-economic cartograms as well as the World Mapper.