For What It's Worth

A cartogram is a map in which geography distorted to show relative density of something, most often population. They're fun. Not only do they look like you're looking at a funhouse mirror, but they can also be a lot more helpful than standard geographic maps in some instances. For instance:

Click here to see a standard-geography map of the most recent election then click here to see a cartogram of the electoral map, in which state size is weighted for population.

In addition to the above cartograms, Michael Gastner, Cosma Shalizi, and Mark Newman of the University of Michigan worked out a cartogram for county-by-county results and a county-by-county cartogram using shades of purple to indicate percentages of voters per candidate (counties that a candidate won by a larger margin are more blue or red). That last one should be the most interesting. As you can plainly see by going back to this shaded map of counties, there are some really blue counties in the "red states" and some decidedly red counties in the "blue states," but much of the country is more purple than anything.

Turns out that, like so many things about America, it's not as simple as "blue on the edges, red in the middle." Not everyone in (insert state that was for the guy you were against) is a moron for voting for (insert name of guy running against the guy you voted for).

-with thanks to Michael Gastner, Cosma Shalizi, and Mark Newman for taking the time to make the cartograms linked to. To read their entire discussion of these cartograms, click here.