boingboing map

[xatalantax]

a map showing the state breakdowns in shades of purple (proportions of red/blue voting)

http://www.boingboing.net/2004/11/03/purple_haze.html

Comments

[st-theodora.livejournal.com]

thanks for that link, it's important to remember these details.

[lepidosiren.livejournal.com]

Neato.

[evilmagnus]

Dammit, they beat me to it. I was doing one of these, too.

...but theirs is nicer.

[egofood.livejournal.com]

It has the same distortion as the red/blue state maps; it aggregates across broad areas. Which is why I like the county map better and a 3D version of the county map with population as the z-axis would be ideal (though likely a challenge to present in an easy-to-view manner).

[plankton.livejournal.com]

while i agree that it's pretty interesting and heartening, what saddens me is that it is quite easy for the ruling majority to completely dictate the path of the country. the minority gets left behind because they don't have to care about them. government just doesn't really reflect the wide variety of opinions out there. it would be great if there were more shades of grey in politics rather than this versus mentality; never mind additional parties which had any semblence of clout which crossed traditional rep vs dem dogma. libertarians are a good example of this.

[cris.livejournal.com]

and then there's this map, that breaks it down by county:



It's almost funny how you can almost identify the Mississipi based on that small blue path in the middle. Perhaps it proves that Democrats like beaches? ;)

[atalanta.livejournal.com]

and this one:
http://www.princeton.edu/%7Ervdb/JAVA/election2004/

the purple version by county.

[ayun.livejournal.com]

Awesome - that's the one I've been looking for! Seems like the split, though not as stark on the red/blue county map, does seem to exist at a somewhat local level, which is about what I expected. Clusters of deep blue, with bluish-purpley margins shading gradually to red clusters. Makes sense.

You know how GOTV efforts emphasize that local elections affect you more directly than federal ones, and how it's important to vote in them? I think the reason why a lot of people don't is that the real impetus for wanting to change the status quo really doesn't exist at the local level - people live pretty much in areas where they're in rough concensus. I think it was Socrates who cautioned against any democratic political entity larger than a certian number of people, and this seems like a good argument for why that's a sound warning.