All the maps you see of the US election results are sharply divided into blue states and red states. It occurred to me that since “a state goes for Obama” sometimes means “by nine votes”, that it might be interesting to see a sort of representative map. So, the purple map of US election results: 
The whole country’s pretty similar in colour, innit? I suppose this is what Obama was talking about with the “I’ll be your president too” stuff… (map from wikimedia (svg), election results from Google, map as SVG, script to generate map)
Cool. But why is North Carolina solid blue?
Not bad, but it does not reflect the population densities of those states. The North East has a massive population for instance, compared to the red Mid-West.
(I could not get OpenID to work – something to do with a captcha?)
–
Iain Cheyne
It would be interesting to have this map drawn per county, rather than per state.
As a Republican, I am happy to see this happen. I like Obama. Congrats on getting the right person to run this time.
Good point, and it proves how easy it is to tweak statistics to your needs.
Quoting Churchill : “Statistics are like a drunk with a lampost: used more for support than illumination.”
( I could not get openid to work either, but at least I didn’t get the “whatever” post, this time
)
Andrew: yeah, sorry, minor bug in the script. It’s now been rewritten to work properly (and I’ve posted the script, too).
All: yeah, openid is broken. I’m working on it.
[...] America (and beyond) on this day after the election, and Stuart Langridge has found an even better map of how the country voted for the next president than your basic red/blue [...]
Is the fact that Canada’s shown in uniform beige a coincidence or a subtle political statement?
Adam: it was like that on the wikipedia map I borrowed.
I figured it was something like that, I was just being flippant
It’s also interesting to learn that the Atlantic and Pacific oceans are different colors!
Some better maps
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/
This is kinda brilliant. Nice work.
Now you know I not not one to complain but your comment’s CSS seems to be really arsed!
Really really arsed!
Ross: I know, I know.
Hi, I made a similar thing here…
http://www.sunnyblue.net/tp/workblog/?p=180
That’s an interesting map! Here are some even more provocative cartograms…
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/
[...] Stuart Langridge: It’s a purple world …means “by nine votes”, that it might be interesting to see a sort of representative map. So, the purple map of US election results: [...]
[...] » It’s a purple world » as days pass by, by Stuart Langridge It occurred to me that since “a state goes for Obama” sometimes means “by nine votes”, that it might be interesting to see a sort of representative map. So, the purple map of US election results:. The whole country’s pretty similar in … [...]
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