Friday, November 10, 2006

New Map of The House

A pleasure to see the country significantly less stratisfied. Click here to compare to the 2004 election map. Because densely populated areas of the country tend to vote Democratic, the "blue" districts occupy smaller area on average, but they are nonetheless large in terms of numbers of people, which is what matters in an election. We can correct for this by making use of a cartogram, a map in which the sizes of districts are rescaled according to their population. That is, districts are drawn with a size proportional not to their sheer topographic acreage – which has little to do with politics – but to the number of their inhabitants, districts with more people appearing larger than districts with fewer, regardless of their actual area on the ground. For more in- depth maps and info click here. [H/T to ld for maps link. Map courtesy of Mark Newman, Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan]

5 comments:

MarcLord said...

cool cartogram. For comparison, here's the Senate Blue/Red map of the last election:

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/elections/2006/Senate.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1163123045-30usvMq7z5TyXbR3dWFLyQ

Pandabonium said...

Cool map. Much more reflective of the national community.

Anonymous said...

Either way, poor Flordy is still a penis.

Anonymous said...

It's terribly amusing that someone from a state that has ZERO Democratic officials has the time to worry about politics anyplace else.

HopeSpringsATurtle said...

e. frank

I'm not certain to which state you refer in your comment, for I am indeed a California absentee voter. California is considered a "light blue state" with a Democrat majority in state politics and the majority of our house seats and both Senators are also Democrats. I currently LIVE in Texas which while being a "red state" definitly has many Democrats in office statewide and a new Democratic Congressman in the 22nd district (Tom Delay's old seat). Apparently you are unaware that even one is MORE THAN ZERO.