Sunday, October 23, 2016

Visualizing USA Elections Map Better

In USA Presidential elections each state contributes certain number of votes based on number of citizens, not the surface size of each state.
Still, almost all visualizing of results of elections is done by coloring whole area of each state in read or blue,
incorrectly implying that votes are proportional to visible size of each state.
In addition, typical geo maps projections have distortion that more northern states look larger that they really are.

There is a better way to visualize data. Here is my simple solution:
using bar charts proportional to number of "electoral votes" of each state
and total votes for each party candidate. This is based on results of 2012 elections.
The map is also "interactive"; by clicking on state bar you can see effect of switching between red and blue.


VT: 6 NV UT NM ID WA OR CA MT WY CO AZ AK HI TX OK KS NE SD ND MN WI IL IA MO AR LA MS AL GA FL SC NC TN KY IN OH WV VA PA NY ME MI DC MD DE NJ MA RI CT NH VT Republicans Romney 206 Democrats Obama 332

This is instead of a typical red-blue map: United States presidential election, 2012 @ Wikipedia

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