At last! This link provides some much need perspective on those red and blue states. It contains several maps and cartograms of the 2004 US Presidential election results. The red/blue concept is still used, but the information is evaluated according to several different factors on different maps.
I found these fascinating. Even just a quick glimpse at each is revealing. (They are all on one page.) The 7th map is my particular favorite.
The usual red state/blue state map with which everyone is familiar. (This one assumes that the undetermined states will go Republican.)
A map in which “the sizes of states have been rescaled according to their population. That is, states are drawn with a size proportional not to their sheer topographic acreage – which has little to do with politics – but to the number of their inhabitants.”
A map “scaling the sizes of states to be proportional to their number of electoral votes.”
A map of “US counties, again colored red and blue to indicate Republican and Democratic majorities respectively…”
The cartogram showing what the county-level election returns look like. “The amount of red on the map is skewed because there are a lot of counties in which only a slim majority voted Republican. One possible way to allow for this, suggested by Robert Vanderbei at Princeton University, is to use not just two colors on the map, red and blue, but instead to use red, blue, and shades of purple to indicate percentages of voters.” And that leads us to the next map…
A map using red, blue, and shades of purple to indicate percentages of voters.
The cartogram using red, blue, and shades of purple to indicate percentages of voters. In this map, it appears that only a rather small area is taken up by true red counties, the rest being mostly shades of purple with patches of blue in the urban areas.
Side by side map and cartogram “using a color scale that ranges from red for 70% Republican or more, to blue for 70% Democrat or more. This is sort of practical, since there aren’t many counties outside that range anyway, but to some extent it also obscures the true balance of red and blue.”
What I hope that some people will learn from looking at these maps is that in both a figurative and literal sense, there are holes in the red and blue states and the electoral college causes us to paint with too broad a brush – or crayon, in some cases.
I like the ones that show the U.S. fish-dog Satan child. I hope the next president will fight to have the U.S. filled in and the dirt moved around so that it really looks like that. I choose to think that is an early blueprint commisioned by a congressional research panel.
I didn’t think we could milk the election for any more Pit threads, but I’m so happy to be wrong.
Could you people just give it a goddamned rest already? Pit your slovenly neighbors, or the guy who cut you off in traffic this morning, or the idiot who cut ahead of you in line. Rail against the injustice of Wal-Mart express lanes, or the convicted minor criminals who will be ringing bells for the Salvation Army as part of their community service sentences and fishing coins out of the kettle with a coat hanger and chunk of bubblegum. Deplore the commercialism of the holiday season, and rant about the killjoys who are closing down your favorite New Year’s party venue.
Just stop it with the fucking election. It’s over. Do we really need to argue about how densly populated election districts are? Do you really think you are that much smarter than people who voted the other way? Do you think that you could have changed the outcome or gotten a bigger margin if people just fully understood your position?
You’re a goddamned IDIOT if you think that way.
Shut up, sit down, examine what happened, and try to understand why. I’m talking to both sides here. Whoever you are, you don’t have a monopoly on rectitude.
You’re acting like a bunch of unruly, ignorant children.
I missed the part where anyone in this thread expressed themselves in a way other than silly attempts at humor or conveyed any of the points you are ranting about.
Looks like somebody is trying too hard to make excuses. A small hand full of coastal cities should not get to choose the leader for the entire nation.
If we put some 100,000 acre ranches in Rhode Island then the population probably would not be more than double that of Wyoming.
It is obvious that the city people vote different from most of the rest of the country. Maybe we just let the filthy crime ridden cities do their thing and we decent folks with values do our own thing.
