6 ms·
Purple map, 2012 edition
- Blocks8 14y ago50 Shades of Purple. Thank you for freedom of choice.
- stuartlangridge 14y agoha! I wish I'd thought of that tagline for the map. I might steal that at some future date, if you don't mind :)
- correctifier 14y agoThe map is really interesting, but its hard to read with those two colours. I'd like to see it with just white-blue or white-red.
- Blocks8 14y agoDefinitely, use it!
- plessthanpt05 14y agoso if this is the more "realistic" representation of electoral college turn-out (instead of the winner take all [for all but 2 states]), what is the breakdown in terms of electoral votes then? does this make it closer?...or give obama a win by an even larger margin?...etc?
- adestefan 14y agoI always preferred the cartogram as shown at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2012/ http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2012/
- mindstab 14y agoThis seems to be showing completely different information so I'm not sure it's much of a comparison
- thingie 14y agoI wonder how many people didn't bother to show up at the election rooms because their vote wouldn't mean anything. Being pro-Romney in a strong "blue" state or pro-Obama in the "red" one.
- jmmcd 14y agoWell yeah, but being pro-Romney in a strong red state, or pro-Obama in a strong blue state, your vote still doesn't mean anything. The question is whether the "don't bother voting he's going to win anyway" effect is stronger than the "don't bother voting he's going to lose anyway" one.
- mattmaroon 14y agoThis map is kind of silly. How much of a victory does a candidate need to get red or blue to appear? Utah was 72% for one candidate. If all the map shows us is that nobody got 100%, or that 72% red and 28% blue is a shade of purple, then, well, duh.
- bryanlarsen 14y agoThis map makes the point that the United States is not the divided nation that pundits claim. Most states were fairly close to a 50/50 split vote wise (aka purple). Even in Utah the vote was only 3:1 Romney:Obama; they are not as different from blue states as people think.
- pdonis 14y agoThe fact that most states are close to 50-50 means the nation as a whole is more divided, not less: there are lots of people in every state on both sides.
- sp332 14y agoIf people in the poorer states like Alabama voted the same way as people in richer states like Maryland, that means they have more in common. If people from a small state with low income inequality like New Hampshire are evenly split, that means whatever divides the candidates is not economic, geographic, or cultural reasons.
- bduerst 14y agoThat's not how data works. All this purple map shows is that the division between republican and democratic voters is prevalent in the majority of the states. It says nothing about the demographics of the voters.
- sp332 14y agoWe already know the demographics of people in the various states though. If people above a certain "richness" level liked one candidate over the other, then the majority in Maryland would have voted one way and Alabama the other. (Or both the same way, if the necessary level were very high or very low.) The fact that about 50% of Alabama voted each way and about 50% of Maryland voted each way means income level does not strongly change the way people voted. This isn't about Democrats vs Republicans, because about 40% of Americans don't identify with either party. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_U.S._states#Current_party_strength http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_U.S... Party affiliation isn't nearly enough to explain how close this election was.
- michaelfeathers 14y agoNice, but I wonder how objective `halfway between red and blue' is when people evaluate color. Halfway might appear to be 2/3 to some people.
- twelvechairs 14y agoAll it needs is a key showing what shade is 50/50. Unfortunately one isn't provided...
- stuartlangridge 14y agoGood call. Map updated to include a key!
- r00fus 14y agoThe key isn't that helpful. Suggestion: a color slider showing continuity between two (asymptotic) extremes. Better yet would be quantizing it into 10 or 20% buckets so people could better guage a given state more easily.
- goodcanadian 14y agoSure, a key is provided. Look at the colour of Florida!
- peterjs 14y agoI don't really think that the colors are working out that well. I'm having a hard time imagining the continuum of colors between red and blue. Mapping the variable (percentage of votes for either party) to saturation or brightness of a certain hue would be more straightforward and intuitive. Although, it would make for a pretty lousy political statement as compared to purple :) Another way to make the two basic colors more interesting could be the delta between the state and 50% and mapping it to saturation in both directions, i.e. CA dark blue, OH light blue, UT darker red… but I'm pretty sure some news outlets already did that.
- 14y ago
- startupfounder 14y agoIt would be great to get even more granular and get to the county level to show how even the "divided" counties are purple as well. My guess is that you might get some counties that are 100% Red or 100% Blue. These colors are great, but almost ultraviolet to my eyes. I can only look at the map for 5 seconds. Also, the color doesn't really tell me how far from 50/50 the states are.
- NelsonMinar 14y agoThe burning, it hurts. I think the purple is like #17f00017f or something. Seriously, you can't just mix RGB like this; perceptual color scales like Cynthia Brewer has helped popularize are the right choice. http://colorbrewer2.org/ http://colorbrewer2.org/
- pronoiac 14y agoFor anyone who wants to do this, the data's available: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/nov/07/us-2012-election-county-results-download http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/nov/07/us-2012-...
- hammock 14y agoI'm going to do it right now!
- pserwylo 14y agoI stumbled upon the same dataset, so did the following map: http://i.imgur.com/8YjOg.png http://i.imgur.com/8YjOg.png Here is some notes: https://gist.github.com/4034954 https://gist.github.com/4034954 Edit: If anything, I'd say that the counties themselves are more divided than I thought. The one which surprises me the most is the deep south of texas, which is quite blue. Also, I do not claim that I did this flawlessly, there is a chance I stuffed up and it is not showing the right data, but I don't really have the time to play with it for too long :)
- mikeash 14y agoThe first thing I noticed on your map (which is really nice, by the way) was that it's far more divisive than the per-state version. Most interesting. I think this just highlights what people have been saying for quite a while now, that the political divide in this country isn't red states versus blue states, but urban versus rural. If you go to a level that separates those, as per-county does but per-state doesn't, you see a much bigger divide.
- pla3rhat3r 14y agoThis probably REALLY cool. #colorblind
- bduerst 14y agoNow they should use saturation to indicate which percentage of the voting population actually turned out to the polls.
- debacle 14y agoOur voting demographics have historically been geographic by coincidence of education, industry, or creed. In 2012, with almost no information barriers, the demographics are really more based on economics and education, with race, sex, and sexual preference also taking a strong role. The reality is that there are plenty of idiots to go around. Anyone who pays attention to their own local politics knows that.
- Osmium 14y agoWhat a horrific colour scheme. You want colours that contrast well; a red-green gradient would be much better. A "neutral" state would then be an easy to discern shade of brown.
- trhtrsh 14y agoTranslation, for people with a common form of color blindness: "a brown-brown gradient would be much better. A "neutral" state would then be an easy to discern shade of brown."
- Osmium 14y agoHah, good point. Should've known better. Still, it's not hard to find something better than shades of fuchsia. Blue to orange with white in the middle perhaps?
- exolxe 14y agoReally interesting in the concept, specific color choices aside, it's a great point that general portrayal really bifurcates states along partisan boundaries when they're really pretty close proportionally... Honestly the whole bipartisan system is a joke, the illusion of choice.