If you are a blue voter, you are surely aware of the criticism of red state/blue state maps that the balance is improperly displayed because many of the red states in the middle of the country have a lot of land but not very many voters, so giving those states a large area on a map is misleading.
Mark Newman
My favorite solution to this problem has always been the Spider-Man-looking county-by-county cartogram scaled to population or electoral vote size, like the one above by Mark Newman of the Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan. The above shows "a color scale that ranges from red for 70% Republican or more, to blue for 70% Democrat or more." Plus, it's Spider-Man-like.
Meet me on the other side for not only the best map yet, but another one that's a real mindblower.
This morning, io9 shared another solution to the problem: a Goldsberry map by John Nelson.
John Nelson
Nelson plotted a red or blue dot for every hundred votes for President Obama or Mitt Romney. You can see a bigger version here but I think it works best when you see the whole country and general patterns are visible (can you see the black belt?) along with a stark depiction of just how sparse the population is in those big red areas.
Unfortunately the details in the more heavily populated areas are lost in purple mud, so there's not much to see if you look really close.
Enter Chris Howard, a fantasy and science fiction author and illustrator who took the county-by-county map by Mark Newman and overlaid population density data from other sources to make the clearest picture I've seen of Purple America.*
Chris Howard
Now for the mindblower: Among the sources Howard cites in his explanation of his map is Princeton University's Robert J. Vanderbei (Note to self, go back and play with his faculty page later). Vanderbei's solution to showing the population differences without distorting the geography is to render the population data into a third dimension on a spinning 3D map. NOTE: The file is 55MB, so after you click, it takes a while to load. Here's the direct link.
*I've put a copy of the large version of the Chris Howard map on our media servers as well, to hopefully share some of the hosting burden, but please use the Chris Howard links as the credit is all his.
Leave a Comment:
I like Prof. Mark Newman's swirly map.
I'm in that dark blue bit hanging off the bottom of red-and-purple Texas.
Pray for us.
These maps show something I've been noticing lately-- the big political divide these days isn't so much between "red" and "blue" states. It's primarily a divide between urban and nonurban areas. People in large cities are mostly Democratic voters, while people in rural areas, small towns, and, to some extent, suburbs, are more often Republican voters. This could also be parsed by ethnicity and age and so forth (more minority people, more single people, and more younger people live in cities), but to me it looks urban vs. rural and exurban more than anything else.
Republicans have largely nailed down the votes of nonhispanic white, older people in areas that are relatively sparsely populated. Unfortunately for Republicans, those bucolic white people are a shrinking proportion of the whole electorate.
It makes me think about the ancient Athenian solution, which was to form groups that each contained citizens from the country, city, and coast, so that one or the other of those regions wouldn't dominate. Since the Greeks invented democracy, one wonders if we can take a page from their book and do something similar so that rural folks don't feel like the vote is stacked against them. Of course, Greece is much smaller. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deme
The map shows it all .. the closer you live to water the closer to sanity you are...even in the deep South it's blue along the Mississippi.
Democracy looks like our courts working for all people regardless if you are a man or woman, white or black or rich or poor. When our court system becomes about pay to play then it's irrelevant if you are a republican or democrat. Right now, across the country, the monied spouse is controlling the matrimonial court. They control the purse strings and therefore, control the case.
We need Judges who act like Judges and ensure the non-monied spouse has equal legal fees including experts, transcripts, appeals and all aspects of the case. One spouse cannot spend at least $300,000 on his lawyer's fees flying in attorneys from MI to NY and my attorney has not been paid. He paid at least $75,000 for a forensic accountant and I have received $15,000 which the Judge forced me to use for ridiculous net worth statements to get the legal fees she failed to enforce to prove I was the non-monied spouse.
It is time we stop the matrimonial mafia that is controlling our legal system. I need your help to sign my petition to remove Judge Laura Drager from the bench. It is time we took back our judicial system and ensured the constitution was upheld. No matter which side of the aisle you are on, this is something we can all agree on.
http://www.change.org/petitions/the-nys-judicial-commission-remove-judge-laura-drager-from-the-bench
Ah... the blue curve across the mid southern states is still there. A few months ago, in a "geek moment," Rachel displayed the map showing the ancient gulf coast line which was along that blue curve. This was where the rich alluvial soil was the best for growing crops and and where antebellum African Americans were concentrated for field work - and now still live, but free. Politics and ancient geology gloriously coexistent!
I kept it simple, this map shows no detailed info, but I made sure that the colors used didn't sway viewers' interpretation of the data.
Here's my map, made using Politico's Election Map results, and using only true cyan and magenta at voting percentage for the color blends.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/76260647@N06/8169070414/
It may seem really simple, but it was done in response to a map that showed Hawaii (voting results 71% to 28% in favor of Obama) as grape purple. The designer of that map had used a blue with red mixed into it as a starting base tone when he designed his color mix. To see how "purple" our country truly is (or is not), you have to start with a blue that lacks any red in the mix.
Here's the map that brought on my need to fix the error in infographic.
http://i.imgur.com/9q8Am.jpg
I kept it simple, this map shows no detailed info, but I made sure that the colors used didn't sway viewers' interpretation of the data.
Here's my map, made using Politico's Election Map results, and using only true cyan and magenta at voting percentage for the color blends.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/76260647@N06/8169070414/
It may seem really simple, but it was done in response to a map that showed Hawaii (voting results 71% to 28% in favor of Obama) as grape purple. The designer of that map had used a blue with red mixed into it as a starting base tone when he designed his color mix. To see how "purple" our country truly is (or is not), you have to start with a blue that lacks any red in the mix.
Sorry about the dual post! It returned an error when I first clicked through. Retried w/out the second link.
http://wallstreetpit.com/97768-was-the-driftless-area-obamas-ace-in-the-hole/
Proud to be from the Driftless Area!
I don't like Florida because they elected that sleaze ball criminal Rick Scott pertetrator of most massive Medicare fraud in history along with Bill Frist but I do like the shape of Florida because it looks like the US is pissing on Cuba. One can only guess how much bigger the Obama victory had been if Florida had not supressed the vote.
Florida is a racist state and the GOP is a party with a lot of racists. http://biggerfatterpolitics.blogspot.com/2012/10/retired-army-col-lawrence-wilkerson-my.html This is not to say that all Republicans are racists but most racists are Republicans. It was refreshing to hear a Republican admit that. Retired Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson said it well but guys like him go back to the time of Reagan when there really were Conservatives and the GOP had some honor. I think that the only honorable and somewhat sane GOP candidate was Ron Paul and look how those vultures screwed him.
Democracy won this time in part because of greats like Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, JFK, FDR, Lincoln, Bill Clinton, Hillary, MLK and Barack Obama but it lost in 2000 because of plutocrats, racists and liars like Dick Armey, John Sununu, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the rest of the NeoCON entertainment complex but what is worse than the liars and the mouth pieces on the right are the haters and the morons who believe them. I would love it is Rachel or Chris Mathews would get one of these mouth breathing Bible thumpin tea tarded birther ditto heads on national TV and expose them for the trash that they are and let them do it with their own words.
Most of the above comments show the intelectual bankruptcy of the leftist mindset. It is simply false that conservative voters are less educated than left leaning socialist voters. The percentage of votes for democratic candidates is highest among those with no high school diploma, second highest among those with only a high school degree, lower among those with some college, and smallest among those with a 4 year college degree. It goes back up among those with post graduate degrees, but if you take out law degrees and education doctorates (two professions that are totally dependent on government) this group votes highest of all for republicans. The real divide is between people who have children and people who don't. This divide is roughly 2 to 1 each way. I guess if I didn't have children I would be selfish too and vote for democrats, except that I love my freedoms too much. Democrats vote with their emotions, republicans with their brains. The problem is that emotions are selfish. A nation thaqt will trade its freedoms for security (or health care) very soon will have neither. The government has an appetite that is insatiable. Soon enough it will be coming after you and yours. The government is a necessary evil. Yes it's necessary but don't forget it's evil.
Actually, you have your facts wrong. Democrats do tend to be both the least educated and the MOST educated of voters. But let's take a better look at post-grads:
Lawyers: as of 2010, the ABA lists 1,225,452
Doctors: as of 2008, the AMA lists 954,224
Nurses: as of 2008, the ANA lists 3,063,163
College Professors: as of 2010, the BLS lists 1,765,000
K-8 Teachers: as of 2011, the BLS lists 1,580,500
Middle School Teachers: as of 2011, the BLS lists 642,820
High School Teachers: as of 2011, the BLS lists 1,004,850
Now those are just the ones covering the fields you mentioned. Here's the total for votes, if they all voted Democrat: 10,236,009. That's about the voting population of California for this most recent election (10,925,841 source: Poltico)
People vote Democrat when they're young because of emotion, but they also vote Dem (or progressively) because of logic. I myself did a math breakdown of scare mailers for a state Prop that tried to sway voters using numbers, but not truth. The breakdown showed the lies contained with mailer, and made it clear that the Proposition was actually beneficial.
I don't hold an education degree, mine is a B.S.. Neither do my two aunts who are doctors, or my uncle - who works as a handyman, but holds a four year degree in Psychology. We all vote Dem., and we do so because of running the numbers for what the GOP suggests, or because we actually look at the policies they propose.
For example: It isn't "emotion" or "sentiment" to not support a party that will not support your rights. I'm not a Christian, and I don't wish to live in a theocracy of any sort. I'm truly disturbed by the attitudes held about proven scientific fact by GOP members of the Congressional Science Committee. At this point, if you believe a party that is basing its day-to-day operational decisions on faith in religion is using its "brain" - you're not really thinking yourself.
You're also not taking the time to do solid research, look at real numbers from multiple sources, and make your own evaluation. I'm guessing you consider yourself Libertarian rather than GOP, but you need to realize that things occurring now began a long time ago - want to better understand the PPACA? You should research Reagan and EMTALA, and see how his unfunded socialization of our country's ERs resulted in rising medical costs. He came after Nixon, who has his own sins, health wise.
When a current constituency is placed in a position of fixing long term problems they have the additional issue of the public's short (and skewed) memory to deal with. A major problem with our current perspective on politics is that we treat them as a current event taking place out of time. That's a false perception, and one we should change. You didn't even realize that, according to the Pew Center, "Lower-income and less educated whites also have shifted substantially toward the Republican Party since 2008." http://www.people-press.org/2012/08/23/a-closer-look-at-the-parties-in-2012/
The party of racism is the democratic party. It has been historically and it is today. Anyone who believes that a person should be judged by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character is by definition a racist. Therefore anyone who supports affirmitive action, which is a tenant of the democratic party, should consider themself a racist. If the ku klux klan had devised a plot to destroy the black family it could not have done a better job than what the democratic party did. By fostering a culture of dependency and victemhood liberals have robbed the economically disadvanteged of their dignity. Racial minorities have a disproportiately higher rate of poverty than the rest of the population. There is a conspiracy against blacks and hispanics in our country by liberal politicians who want to keep them dependent on the government. Remember, a con man is a confidence man. The conservatives cannot be conning blacks and hispanics because blacks and hispanics don't trust conservatives. It is the liberals who have their confidence and thus are able to insult and degrade them. Liberals want to "help" racial minorities, thus implying that they are better in some way than those minorities. Conservatives want to treat everyone as equals not condescend to them.
This, more telling map, reflects the demographic and values shift that reflects the new political landscape.