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United States Government Politics

3D Election Results Map by County 463

Posted by michael from the tufte-would-be-proud dept.
FlopEJoe writes "There are many web-based electoral maps available on the regular news sites (Electorial-vote, CNN) but this image 3d county results seemed more profound to me. Wish I had more to say about it but I don't want to cloud the discussion. I think it speaks for itself and the spin-masters should enjoy it."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

3D Election Results Map by County More

3D Election Results Map by County

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  • You forgot Hawaii! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by JHromadka ( 88188 )
    Hawaii, that is one of the members of our coal^H^H^Hstates. :) /Poland

  • Correlations (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @10:18AM (#10733775) Journal
    Because the peaks are due to population, this must correlate somewhat to the skyscraper distribution graph also.

    What software was used?

    • Re:Correlations (Score:4, Informative)

      by gi-tux ( 309771 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @10:43AM (#10733947) Homepage
      Well, since it is on the ESRI site, I would have to make the assumption that they probably used ArcInfo. After all that is their product and it can export a JPEG. However, it could be done with ArcIMS (also their product).

    • African American Vote (Score:3, Interesting)

      by JavaLord ( 680960 )
      Because the peaks are due to population

      I'd say they have more to do with African American population, since 88% of them voted democratic [cnn.com]which is by far the largest margin in any racial grouping. 88% of African Americans also live in metropolitan areas [wikipedia.org] according to the 2000 census.

      The Republican party must find a way to reach out to these people or at least somehow counter the perception that Republicans are racists.

      • Re:African American Vote (Score:4, Insightful)

        by TrebleJunkie ( 208060 ) <ezahurakNO@SPAMatlanticbb.net> on Friday November 05, 2004 @12:26PM (#10734814) Homepage Journal
        As a conservative, let me tell you that I'm not racist. By-and-large, conservatives are not racist.

        That we're percieved as such, however, says a *lot* about the prejudices held by those who would call us racist. To which I can only respond with, "Dumbasses, heal thyself."

        • As a conservative, let me tell you that I'm not racist. By-and-large, conservatives are not racist.
          That we're percieved as such, however, says a *lot* about the prejudices held by those who would call us racist.

          If I see you, as a conservative individual, and say "oh, you must be a racist!", that is prejudice.

          It is not prejudiced to note overall trends. You are correct in noting that most self-described conservatives are not racists. In fact, on the contrary- as a group conservatives in America seem to

          • Re:African American Vote (Score:4, Insightful)

            by corbettw ( 214229 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @02:40PM (#10742461) Journal
            It is not prejudiced to note overall trends.

            So it's not prejudiced to say black men are more likely to be violent, since more black men are in jail for violent offenses than white men? If you find my comment prejudicial (which, really, you should, because it is), then you should realize yours is, too.
      • Agreed. Democrats successfully painting Republicans as racist is the greatest propaganda coup in history since EVERY real civil rights gain Blacks have ever made and continue to make has been because of Republicans. Heck, the Republican party was FORMED as a single-issue party: abolition.
      • The Republican party must find a way to reach out to these people or at least somehow counter the perception that Republicans are racists.

        Why should we reach out to anyone? Last time I checked, we won the election hands down. Considering how many people voted for Kerry and also voted for constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, I'd say Republicans should become more conservative, not less. (I bring up gay marriage as one example, especially since it's likely that blacks who voted for Kerry voted ag

  • I was modded down as troll for saying this (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xutopia ( 469129 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @10:22AM (#10733801) Homepage
    when I feel it is totally legitimate to ask. Has anyone ever looked at intelligence/education as a factor for party affiliation? Are the more educated people in the Bush or Kerry camp? I'm just wondering here.

    In France there was a very racist party (Front National) and the people who would vote for them were on average less educated than people who voted for other parties. The FN leader, Le Pen, said it had to do with the propaganda we have in schools against the FN. Which of course wasn't believed by anyone but the people without an education.

    • Re:I was modded down as troll for saying this (Score:5, Informative)

      by Tanktalus ( 794810 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @10:30AM (#10733857) Journal

      Yeah, CNN has the exit polls [cnn.com] - just look for "EDUCATION" and you should find it.

    • Re:I was modded down as troll for saying this (Score:5, Informative)

      by NeuroKoan ( 12458 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @10:32AM (#10733873) Homepage Journal
      Education in this considered in the US to be very liberal. In fact, if you listen to the Republicans enough, they will dismiss almost anything a college kid says by saying "Oh, just another product of the liberal University system in the US"

      So, truth be told, the more someone is educated, the more likely they are to be liberal. This is not to say that Republicans are stupid (in fact, I think they are quite intelligent).

      Anyways, here is the breakdown you were asking for.

      Election Breakdown by IQ [geekgossip.net] Any doubts at the validity, the author provides his sources, so feel free to double check.

      • Re:I was modded down as troll for saying this (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Zelet ( 515452 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @10:44AM (#10733952) Journal
        The United States Democratic Party is considered to be slightly right of center of every other western country on this planet. So I would have to disagree with you about our education system being "liberal."

        If learning about evolution and not creationism in science class is liberal - than I guess we are for now.

        To me, I think the republican party stands for religion more than anything else. They have lost the principles of small government and fiscal responsibility. They have also lost the ideals of isolationism in world affairs. The one defining characteristic of the current republican party is Christian "values." Of course affordable healthcare so people don't die in the street is also a value. Giving people a wage they can live off of is also a value. But those don't count I guess.

        • Re:I was modded down as troll for saying this (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Hungus ( 585181 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @10:56AM (#10734046) Journal
          Of course affordable healthcare so people don't die in the street is also a value. Giving people a wage they can live off of is also a value. But those don't count I guess
          Sure they are of value, they are just not provided for in the constitution as being in the domain of the Federal govt. Thus constitutionally, the feds shouldn't be dealing with it anyways. If you honestly feel th efederal govt should provide these things thats fine, but then we need to modify the constitution, as the federal government is only entitled to the powers and responsibilities granted there in.

        • Wages are earned. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @11:17AM (#10734239)
          "Giving people a wage they can live off of is also a value"

          Wages are earned, not given. They are earned by doing work for the value of the wage. Things really get messed up if someone outside sets the value of the wage without regard to the value of the work. Forcing companies to overpay workers at some government-set wage that has nothing to do with the work also demeans real work and turns the whole affair into a welfare program: a forced handout.

          Every time the government arbitrarily sets the mininum wage to be higher, thousands of people end up losing their jobs, as it forces companies to try to get by without low-end jobs. When I point it out to people who favor the "minimum wage", the typical response is that these jobs are worthless: a poor person is better off getting nothing, as compared to getting $17,000 a year.

          As long as you are arbitrarily setting wages without regard to value, why not set the minimum wage to $1,000 an hour? It will make everyone a millionaire. Why stop at a low value?

          • Re:Wages are earned. (Score:3, Informative)

            by ArsonSmith ( 13997 )
            The only "real" argument for a minimum wage law I have come up with has to do with economics as a whole rather than giving poor people a hand out. We have to look at the reason inflation is necessary for economic growth.

            First if money is deflated in value then people with money don't have to do anything at all. The more money they have the more money they get just by holding onto it. No reason to invest in anything because your money is just gaining value. This is bad because only rich people will hav
          • We spent a whole week studying the effects of the minimum wage in my collge
            econ class and I remember being amused that a minimum wage being bad is one of the
            few things (non-partisan) economists agree on.

            It speaks volumes about a candidate when he promises to raise the minimum wage
            to win more votes when you know he knows (or at least his economic advisors
            know) that it makes poor econimic policy.

            In fact, I use the minimum wage position as a litmus test of sorts when
            deciding who to vote for. If someone is wi

            • Re:Wages are earned. (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Pxtl ( 151020 )
              Yes, because economics are the only metric by which the effectiveness of government must be measured, rather than the actual quality of life of its constituents.

              You can have a perfectly viable and impressive economy while shitting on everyone in it.

      • It's a hoax (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Check the author's sources. They prove it's a hoax that started in 2000.

        That pages uses www.chrisevans3d.com/files/iq.htm [chrisevans3d.com] as a source. It'll redirect you to attenuation.net/files/iq.htm [attenuation.net]. From there, you can find www.sq.4mg.com/IQschools.htm [4mg.com] which has estimates for state IQ based on ACT/SAT tests. You'll notice that the IQs are much more evenly distributed. If you follow his link to http://www.sq.4mg.com/IQ-States.htm [4mg.com], you'll see links at the bottom to the unverified hoax IQ scores [4mg.com] used in your chart.
      • Ah, another "gullible". Check this:

        Satire gone bad [snopes.com]

      • The statistics from Election Breakdown by IQ [geekgossip.net] may be misleading since the standard deviations were not reported. Just another poorly interpreted poll. Sigh. :-/

    • Re:I was modded down as troll for saying this (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well, from the people I know or have talked to in bars and on the street- I can say that the more intelligent (not necessarily more educated) people all supported Kerry. The less intelligent (but not necessarily less educated) all went for Bush.

      I believe that religion factors into this as well. People who are more religious all like Bush. People who are less or not religious at all support Kerry. I guess this could factor into intelligence as well, as it seems the smarter in general you are less likely yo

      • "People who agreed with me are smarter than people who don't." Perhaps we should rephrase this a bit: Since I am human, and have any sort of an ego (that, in itself, is not bad - it's quite healthy), I think that I am smart. Therefore, anyone who agrees with me must also be smart.

        I'm still waiting for the first objective post in favour of Kerry in politics.slashdot.org. Of course, the same could be said for Bush, so anyone taking this as a jab should consider how meaningless of a jab it is.

        Same could b

    • Re:I was modded down as troll for saying this (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Numbers from CNN Exit Polling [cnn.com]

      BUSH KERRY NADER
      No High School (4%) 49% 50% 0%
      H.S. Graduate (22%) 52% 47% 0%
      Some College (32%) 54% 46% 0%
      College Graduate (26%) 52% 46% 1%
      Postgrad Study (16%) 44% 55% 1%

      BUSH KERRY NADER
      No College Degree (58%) 53% 47% 0%
      College Graduate (42%) 49% 49% 1%

      Overall, things aren't terribly lopsided one way or the other. The one area Kerry has a lead, po

      • Actually, Kerry also has a lead in the no high school crowd. This proves the old saw: "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," where little in this case means high school degree up to bachelor's degree. :) Obviously, one could also look at the no high school degree as the people who are most likely to be in poverty and therefore most likely to be wanting a change. I think it would be interesting to combine statistics for wealth and education. I suspect that those who have less wealth and more education (

      • Maybe because post-grads are not in touch with the real world? This isn't really meant as a joke. There are lots of really intelligent people who have no idea what the average person is like or what his life is like.

        There is a slight (probably not statistically significant) trend up for Bush until the very last item. I find that not surprising because at that level of education, people are more likely to have radically different views than most. While we can argue who represents the mainstream more, I

    • Re:I was modded down as troll for saying this (Score:5, Funny)

      by ralphclark ( 11346 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @10:40AM (#10733919) Journal
      You forgot that education and intelligence are two different things. The exit polls reveal that there is not much of a correlation between political affiliation and education. They don't say anything about intelligence though.

      Not surprising really - can you imagine the pollsters hanging around outside with their clipboards asking everyone: "hello? Who did you vote for? What? Are you stupid?"
    • Have not seen a legitimate one for 2004, but this has 2000 [4mg.com]
      Thier are some spreading around for 2004 but all they did was take one of the liberal hoax ones from 2000 and change the states around, and false number are still used.
    • when I feel it is totally legitimate to ask. Has anyone ever looked at intelligence/education as a factor for party affiliation? Are the more educated people in the Bush or Kerry camp? I'm just wondering here.

      I'll go out on a limb and say that Kerry got the more educated vote, but that it's correlative instead of causative.

      Basically, city dwellers tend to be more liberal than rural residents, who are famously conservative. This probably has more to do with the facts of life in the respective locations than anything else. That is, densely populated environments tend to foster an atmosphere of mutual dependence (because if they didn't, the 10,000,000 people packed into a small area would probably melt down), whereas farmers pretty much have to be self-reliant. In harvest season, you'll help your neighbor if you can, but your first priority is getting your own work done first because that's what's going to feed your family for the next year.

      I don't think that either of these ways of living is inherently better; each is well-suited for its own niche. So, I think it's perfectly rational for rural populations to be more conservative than city populations.

      If you buy that so far, then consider where educated people tend to go after they graduate. You just got a PhD in particle physics. Are you likely to move to a Midwestern town of 15,000? No. You're going to go where there are jobs for people with your qualifications, and that pretty much exclusively means a largish city. And when you get there, you'll probably find your politics sliding to the left to match those of your colleagues and neighbors that were already there.

      I don't think intelligence directly maps to political leanings at all. I've personally known plenty of smart (and dumb) people on either end of the spectrum (or corner of the graph if you're a 2d-map fan). I do think, though, that your intelligence has an effect on where you'll live, and you're place of residence has a large effect on your political beliefs.

      So, I'll stick with my original statement that educated people tend to vote for Kerry.

      PS. My wife and I are both educated (her: DPM, me: BS) conservatives. If you interpret my message to say that Kerry supporters are smarter, then you missed the entire point.

      • All the numbers I've ever seen from this and past elections seem to show the Democrats getting either end of the educational spectrum and Republicans getting the middle. Democrats do better with those that didn't graduate high school AND those with graduate degrees. The Republicans do better with high school and college graduates.
    • Yes.

      A lot of pre-election data was gathered on this subject. As usual the more educated someone is (in terms of degrees) the more likely they were to support progressive/democratic candidates, such as Kerry. Data in previous elections mirrors this trend, so no suprise there. Don't be too quick to equate education with intelligence, though. They are two very seperate things.

      Also, along a different line, Bush supporters were vastly more likely to be grossly misinformed about key facts involving terroris
      • Yes and No..

        People with No High school were more likely to vote for Kerry, and those with Post Graduate Degrees were more likely to vote for Kerry.

        People with a HS Diploma, Some College, or a College Degree were more likely to vote for Bush.

        Also, along a different line, Bush supporters were vastly more likely to be grossly misinformed about key facts involving terrorism, the war in Iraq, and the positions of both candidates.

        And where would you get this?

        In numerous surveys/studies I saw data

        I wou

    • when I feel it is totally legitimate to ask. Has anyone ever looked at intelligence/education as a factor for party affiliation?

      College Graduates (26% of the vote) Voted for Bush 52% to 46%, Postgrads (16% of the vote) voted for Kerry 55% to 41%.

      In France there was a very racist party (Front National) and the people who would vote for them were on average less educated than people who voted for other parties.

      You shouldn't call a party racist because they are interested in preserving their langua

  • Isolation (Score:3, Funny)

    by the darn ( 624240 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @10:23AM (#10733810) Homepage
    Cool! I can see my house from here...

    It's kinda funny to see my county all alone and blue on the sea of red (Travis Co,TX).

  • prettier map (Score:5, Informative)

    by deanpole ( 185240 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @10:26AM (#10733829)
    A better looking map is at http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/ [princeton.edu]
  • Why make it 3D? It would be much more readable if they just adjusted the shade of blue/red according to how much of the vote Kerry/Bush got.
    • Readable? I think the "point" of the map is VERY readable, since it's showing how the areas of high Democratic support are clustered with the major population centers. I don't think a slightly diff shade of red could convey the scale of this as well as the 3D spikes.

    • Re:Why 3D? (Score:3, Informative)

      by JabberWokky ( 19442 )
      I "fixed" the map a bit by coloring just four of the county result bars with the (rough) proportional amount of Republican votes.

      Note that I do *not* think this is a good way to view the info. You'll see that I tinted the top of the bars. If I did this for all blue counties, everything would appear red. This is a very very misleading map any way you draw it. Hopefully, this is a bit less misleading than the original:

      "Fixed" Map [cheshirehall.net]

      --
      Evan

  • Electoral College (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 05, 2004 @10:28AM (#10733841)
    Yep... let's just trash the Electoral College. We should only let the political opinion of the people who live at the spikes steer the country. Not like people outside of those spikes might have different POVs than those in the spikes, since we all know that rural and urban environments have exactly the same needs.

    • Electoral College Democracy (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      In a democracy, the vote of the people counts.

      In the Electoral College, the vote of the majority (people living in cities) is diluted to give people living in the suburbs, and Southern Slave Owners, an increased vote. Since we no longer have slave owners, it's kind of moot to continue having the Electoral College. If you read the Federalist Papers, you'll discover that the founding fathers weren't real keen on giving Joe Schmoe a vote, and if you read History, you'll find that slave owners wanted their s

      • Re:Electoral College Democracy (Score:5, Informative)

        by N3WBI3 ( 595976 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @12:09PM (#10734684) Homepage
        In a democracy, the vote of the people counts.

        And mayeb, just maybe if the founders put a democracy in place you might have a point. Were are a Federal Republic.

        Since we no longer have slave owners, it's kind of moot to continue having the Electoral College.

        Except that we are a Federal Republic

        If you read the Federalist Papers, you'll discover that the founding fathers weren't real keen on giving Joe Schmoe a vote

        Yes becuase of joe and 50 of his freinds decide to screw jane and 48 of her friends out of something, in a democracy they can. So instead they built a Represenative system with chekcs and balances.

        The point of a Democracy is that the majority of the people get to determine things.

        As Franklin said "Two Wolves and a Sheep voting on whats for Dinner"

        If you do anything to dilute the power of the majority (Electoral College, Aparthied, for example), then you're not living in a Democracy.

        Oh nevermind you do get it, we are not a democracy we are a Democratic Republic. Now here is one to wrap your head around True Democracy is like True Communism, it cant exist. True Democracy would entail every person voting on everything that would happen. Can you imagine election day, every day for things like peanut subsidies? Without a slave population (like that of ancient Athens) the citizens do not have the time to vote on every issue..

        You can argue all you want about increasing the power of rural voters, but that still doesn't mean it's right -- or that it's a democracy.

        It also does not mean its wrong, and yes we are not a democracy...

        Senators weren't directly elected by the people until the 1920's. Things can, do, and should change.

        Yup and if you want to trash the EC have fun because at least 35-40 States stand to lose power if you do. Electing senators did not affect the states (we are a federal republic) balance of power, traching the EC does.

      • In the Electoral College, the vote of the majority (people living in cities) is diluted to give people living in the suburbs, and Southern Slave Owners, an increased vote.

        There were no suburbs when the electoral college was created, and when it was created one of the ideas behind it was to take away the voting power of slave owners The electoral college was simply a compromise between the states with a large population and the states with a small population to elect a president.

        Since we no longer
    • Slow down a little there. What you're talking about is trashing systems which weigh districts differently, not trashing the Electoral College. The Electoral College is simply one, maniacly absurd method of doing that.

      You can accomplish what you're talking about in any number of ways. Why stick with a bad one?

      For instance, you know when the Electoral College was set up, you were voting for people to go to the College. When you cast your vote a couple of days ago, you were not (traditionally) voting for
  • It appears as though the GOP "red" has enveloped the country and surrounded the largest population centers of the US. How ironic, the color, geography, some might say, like a metastasizing cancer, or a map from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Im just playing devil's advocate, I'm a registered Republican.
  • What does this mean?

    Is the height of the stacks tied to population or numbers of voters or to the margin of victory in that county, percentage or absolute?

    This isn't particularly self-explanatory. A key would be nice.

    • Re:Ummm... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JabberWokky ( 19442 ) <slashdot.com@timewarp.org> on Friday November 05, 2004 @10:44AM (#10733954) Homepage Journal
      As far as I can tell, this is utterly misleading. Unless I'm wrong, what this does is take the county, draw a bar with the height of the population, and then color it with the majority of votes - discarding any other votes.

      That is to say, a high population area may have 48% Republican votes and 49% Democratic votes but the entire tall bar is colored blue.

      --
      Evan

      • Re:Ummm... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Gaetano ( 142855 ) *
        This page is hosted by ESRI. They write graphical information systems software (gis). I think the intent of this image is to illustrate the capability of their software, not so much to illustrate the election results. Looks like using election results was just a provocative way to get someone to look at their software. I couldn't find where this is linked from on their site. You could say linking to it here is puting it out of context. I would expect to see this image in an add for their product in one of t

  • Not all blue areas are large prosperous cities (Score:4, Informative)

    by SpaFF ( 18764 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @10:30AM (#10733853) Homepage
    While most of the blue areas are located in large metro areas, this is not always the case. That blue streak that runs east-west across Alabama is an area known as the "Black Belt" and is one of the poorest most underdeveloped parts of the state.

  • Votes by IQ (Score:3, Insightful)

    by krs-one ( 470715 ) <.moc.smuroflgnepo. .ta. .civ.> on Friday November 05, 2004 @10:39AM (#10733915) Homepage Journal
    Don't know if this is true or not (it looks pretty, so I'm inclined to say yeah, its true), but this map [geekgossip.net] is pretty interesting.

    -Vic
    • Iowa hasn't called it yet - will the "average IQ" change if it gets called for Kerry?

    • Re:Votes by IQ (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Shihar ( 153932 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @10:54AM (#10734031)
      Just realize the statistical fallacies with taking that too far. Namely, correlation does not mean causation. For instance, I would bet that Boston (where I live) has a higher IQ then the middle of nowhere in Texas. You would also see that nowhere Texas votes Republican and Boston votes Democrat. If you assume it is because of IQ, you just made a very large assumption.

      Democrats are more concerned with city issues. The city issues often come at the expense more rural areas. If I live in nowhere Texas and a Democrat blathers on about welfare and the environment, he isn't speak to me. Such a person probably has minimal expense and so even if he doesn't have a job has little need for welfare. The issue with the environment is a complete non-issue when you are surrounded by nothing but clean air. A Republican talking about cutting taxes on the other hand does appeal to such a person because it might very well be one of their biggest expenses.

      You also need to realize that cities inflate their IQ with college students. College students have decidedly fewer issues they have to worry about and tend to be very liberal. As a college student doing the thing that 'feels right' is far more appealing then a tax break because chances are that college student doesn't pay a significant (or any) income tax.

      I am not saying that the above explanations are the correct ones, just giving an example as to why I wouldn't take the analogy too far.
    • Except theses numbers are wrong. This was a standard liberal lie that was put out in 2000, they took the old numbers and changed the winner as needed.
    • It's not true. Based on a satire piece that "fooled many a news publication and is still occasionally cited as a genuine by gullible reporters".

      Snopes talks about it here [snopes.com]

  • Misleading (don't overlook this) (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @10:40AM (#10733922)
    Hidden entirely under this is the important fact that a red county is typically not all red, and a blue county is not all typically blue.

    In other words, a county shows all red even if it is 51% Bush / 49% Kerry. Just so we remember that there is a lot of red in the blue counties, and vice-versa.


  • There should be a huge blue spike in New York City, it went 85% for Kerry and has a larger population than chigago which had a large spike.
  • Take this map of the United States at Night [nasa.gov] and superimpose it over a map of "Red/Blue" Counties [usatoday.com]

    Notice anything?

  • Another Interesting Map (Score:3, Informative)

    by cyranoVR ( 518628 ) * <{moc.liamg} {ta} {RVonaryc}> on Friday November 05, 2004 @11:06AM (#10734132) Homepage Journal
    Sorry, but I've got one more:

    Purple Mountain Majesties [boingboing.net]

    America isn't really "Red" or "Blue." It's Purple.

    Well, aside from Utah, anyway :-\
  • Even on the site [esri.com] that the image is linked from, it doesn't say what the heights represent.

    I saw another poster suggest population, but that doesn't make sense because so much is flat.

    I submit that it is based upon the sway of the vote. The higher the plateau, the farther away from 50% split the vote was, and the color indicates the higher sway of votes. It also explains the higher blue plateaus in the coastal/liberal areas.

    FWIW, I don't appear on that map; I voted for Badnarik [badnarik.org]

  • Meh (Score:2)

    by Guppy06 ( 410832 )
    Everybody seems to be doing by-county maps. What I'd rather see at this point is a per-Congressional district display. You know, something that would divide the country in to areas of (roughly) equal population?

    I also see Hawaii didn't make it onto the map, and from what little of Alaska I can see I suspect they didn't bother with borough lines there.

  • Crime (Score:5, Funny)

    by workindev ( 607574 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @11:50AM (#10734519) Homepage
    The only correlation I see is that the cities with the highest crime rates vote overwhelmingly democratic.

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