The Electoral Map Does Not Tell The Whole Story

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Most of you by now have seen the electoral map depiction of the 2008 election (h/t fivethirtyeight.com).

But simply using the map of the United States creates a visual distortion of election results in that the map is based upon land mass and is not weighted for population or other factors. Western states have large land mass but sparse populations. "Objects in the rearview mirror may appear larger than they are," to paraphrase.

Many of you by now have also seen this fascinating county-by-county map published by the New York Times after Election Day depicting how Obama and McCain faired in comparison to Kerry and Bush in 2004.

^{chart from NY Times}

John McCain faired better than George Bush only in Appalachia and the interior South (loosely referred to as the Bible Belt), areas of the Gulf Coast devastated by hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 (resulting in the relocation of large numbers of African-Americans who have mostly not returned), and the home states of the GOP nominees – Arizona and Alaska, which could prove to be a unique anomally for this one election.

But even this map does not tell the whole story. Cartographers have developed "cartograms" weighted for factors like population, electoral votes, and percentages of the vote. (h/t Election maps Click on image to view/enlarge).

Here are the 2008 presidential election results on a population cartogram of this type:

As you can see, the states have been stretched and squashed, some of them substantially, to give them the appropriate sizes, though it's done in such a way as to preserve the general appearance of the map, so far as that's possible. On this map there is now clearly more blue than red.

We can represent the effects of the electoral college by scaling the sizes of states to be proportional to their number of electoral votes, which gives a map that looks like this:

This cartogram looks similar to the one above it, but it's not identical. The areas of red and blue on the cartogram are now proportional to the actual numbers of electoral votes won by each candidate. Thus this map shows at a glance both which states went to which candidate and which candidate won more electoral college votes – something that you cannot tell easily from the normal election-night red and blue map.

With all of the fancy electronic gadgetry that the networks employed in their election coverage this year, you would think they could use these cartograms to display a more accurate depiction of election results.

One way to improve on the map and reveal more nuance in the vote is to use not just two colors, red and blue, but to use red, blue, and shades of purple in between to indicate percentages of votes. Here is what the normal map would look like if you do this:

And here is what the cartogram looks like:

As this map makes clear, large portions of the country are quite evenly divided, appearing in various shades of purple, although a number of strongly Democratic (blue) areas are visible too, mostly in the larger cities. There are also some strongly Republican areas, but most of them have relatively small populations and hence appear quite small on this map.

Many political analysts now argue that the Republican Party is fast becoming a regional party with its base in the interior South, and several sparsely populated states in the Great Plains and the Mormon Mountain West (Utah, Idaho, Wyoming).

Democratic strategists are already working on a strategy to strengthen the Democratic party in Texas to turn that state into a swing state in 2012; expand upon party gains in the "New South" (Virginia and North Carolina in 2008) to Georgia in 2012; add Arizona to the successful 2008 "Western Strategy" in 2012; and Missouri, which was decided by a razor-thin margin, should also be in play again in 2012.

The 2012 strategy does not have an official title yet, so I would like to propose one of my own: "TAG 'eM" (Texas, Arizona, Georgia and Missouri). These states have the largest population base and, after redistricting, the largest number of electoral votes in 2012 of the states that voted Republican in 2008. (Recent Democratic gains in the Northern Plains states of Montana and North Dakota should also put these states in play.)

By holding onto the states Obama won in 2008 and taking away one or more of these TAG 'eM states from the Republicans in 2012, Democrats can reduce the GOP to a regional party largely concentrated in the Bible Belt and the Mormon Mountain West, reflecting the effects of the social conservative take-over of the Republican Party from the economic conservatives and Republican moderates, which has alienated large portions of Republican-leaning voters and much of the rest of the country.