Cartograms for the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election Results

Declan Butler's cartogram As I predicted, some cartograms of the U.S. presidential election results are already available. These cartograms distort the size of each state based on the number of their electoral college votes — making Rhode Island, with four electoral votes, larger than Alaska, with three. Declan Butler has put together cartograms for presidental elections back to 1964; the shapes change as the populations shift from election to election. A similar principle is behind this interactive map. Thanks to Richard and Frank for the links.

Previously: U.S. Election Results Cartogram (for the 2004 elections).

Posted on Wednesday, November 5, 2008 at 7:31 PM
Categories: Electoral Maps

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Comments

down to the county level as well as by popular vote http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/

[TypeKey Profile Page] Michael Fagan | 11/05/2008 at 7:58 PM | #

Unfortunately Declan is using a geographic coordinate system for his cartograms, whereas for this purpose it’s better IMHO to use an equal-area projection. Here’s my version of the current non-final results:

http://www3.amherst.edu/~aanderson/presidential_election_2008-results11_5A.png

Arguably it doesn’t matter that much for a map that distorts area anyway. But the effect is very visible in the case of Alaska.

— Andy

[TypeKey Profile Page] Andy Anderson | 11/06/2008 at 9:41 AM | #

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