I've been thinking a lot about the whole Red State/Blue State thing recently after reading Jerry Colonna's Blue States; Red States post and Blue States, Red States, and Russia follow-up. It made me wonder what the map would look like if states were colored not red or blue but purple in proportion to their Bush/Gore votes. I'd be shocked if someone hasn't already done this, but I couldn't find it via a cursory Google search, so here is my version hacked together with AppleScript, OmniGraffle, and data from the FEC:
For reference, here is the same map in the "traditional" red and blue:
I'd love to get comments, but to me the purple map tells a very different story than the "traditional" map. America is still divided, but not state against state. I know Jerry's original post was written out of frustration that I can completely understand, and he says that in comments in the follow-up. However, I think the purple map shows that we really could never just split red states from blue states because no states really are all red or all blue.
Here are buttons, T-shirts, mugs, and other tchotchkes based on some of the cooler-looking purple maps and cartograms of the 2004 presidential election.
Posted by: Clear Mandate? | November 12, 2004 at 11:12 PM