Beyond Red and Blue: 7 Ways to View the Presidential Election Map
Slide show reveals what the country would look like if politics trumped geography
Credits: © 2008 M. E. J. NewmanPURPLE REIGN: Resized by county population, a cooler, bluer tone dominates the map. Obama's margin of victory once again reveals itself. © 2008 M. E. J. Newman
COLOR BY NUMBERS: Breaking the regions down to red and blue alone obscures the degree of preference: A win by one vote looks just the same as a million-vote margin. Newman used shades of purple to show intermediate preferences for the two candidates. © 2008 M. E. J. Newman
AMERICAN OR SWISS? When Newman resized each county to reflect its population, a tangled cobweb emerged. Once again, Obama's share of the country swells, dwarfing McCain's geographic advantage. © 2008 M. E. J. Newman
BREAK IT DOWN: County-level data reveal a more precise picture of geographic political preferences. As before, McCain counties are colored red; Obama counties are blue. In this view, McCain appears to have dominated. © 2008 M. E. J. Newman
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BEND TO FIT: University of Michigan at Ann Arbor physics professor Mark Newman used custom software to resize the states based on population [top] and by electoral college representation [below]. These maps give a clearer picture of Obama's landslide victory than a normal electoral map can; though many of the blue states are smaller in physical area, their combined electoral power is great. The two maps are nearly identical, as the electoral college hews closely to population, but less-inhabited states are somewhat bigger in the lower map, as even the least populous states are granted at least three electoral votes, a disproportionate share by the population metric. © 2008 M. E. J. Newman
VOTING BLOCS: The Lower 48 are colored based on state-by-state results from the 2008 presidential election in this standard map: red for the Republican candidate, John McCain, and blue for the Democratic candidate (and eventual victor), Barack Obama. © 2008 M. E. J. Newman
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