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maps redux
Nov. 5th, 2004 11:44 amYou didn't really think we'd done all the maps, did you?
The Obsidian Order weblog includes another way to plot the victory margins. The maps he's done are for the 2000 election, not for the 2004 election, but they're instructive. Rather than using red and blue in direct proportion to the number of Republican and Democrat votes, these maps use a palette in which evenly divided counties are a neutral gray, and the higher the victory margin, the brighter red or blue it appears. As a result, the counties with strong majorities rise clearly out of the background and make themselves more easily seen.
Read the link for a more precise analysis of how this compares with general voter density throughout the country.
What I find especially interesting about this and the other county-by-county maps I've seen is just how split the Southeast is. The Democrats tend to write off the Southern states as lost, despite the reminders of the strong Democratic tendency from poor black communities in that area. On Obsidian's map and on the map of victory margins by county, the southern states bear a much closer resemblance to, say, Illinois or Ohio, than they do to the real Republican bastions like Utah or Wyoming.
Even Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama and South Carolina appear to lean more Democratic than Ohio! From where I sit we seem to be making a colossal error in judgement by not working those states harder.
The Obsidian Order weblog includes another way to plot the victory margins. The maps he's done are for the 2000 election, not for the 2004 election, but they're instructive. Rather than using red and blue in direct proportion to the number of Republican and Democrat votes, these maps use a palette in which evenly divided counties are a neutral gray, and the higher the victory margin, the brighter red or blue it appears. As a result, the counties with strong majorities rise clearly out of the background and make themselves more easily seen.
Read the link for a more precise analysis of how this compares with general voter density throughout the country.
What I find especially interesting about this and the other county-by-county maps I've seen is just how split the Southeast is. The Democrats tend to write off the Southern states as lost, despite the reminders of the strong Democratic tendency from poor black communities in that area. On Obsidian's map and on the map of victory margins by county, the southern states bear a much closer resemblance to, say, Illinois or Ohio, than they do to the real Republican bastions like Utah or Wyoming.
Even Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama and South Carolina appear to lean more Democratic than Ohio! From where I sit we seem to be making a colossal error in judgement by not working those states harder.
