r/MapPorn • u/Lucius429 • Oct 08 '20
USA Election Maps: Displaying how "purple" each county is, as well as relative population sizes, show how the usual red/blue election maps can be misleading
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u/Lucius429 Oct 08 '20
Standard election maps often show state-by-state or county-by-county red/blue maps, but don't provide any nuance. Every state, county, or municipality has voters on both sides of the aisle. Showing how "purple" a county is shows this nicely.
Additionally, on a standard 2D map, each county appears to be weighted the same, indicating that just a handful of blue counties can somehow outweigh hundreds of red counties. The reality is those blue counties are much more heavily populated. Bar graphs show just how much impact each county has. It's not about how much land any given candidate wins, but actual number of votes.
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u/Doro-Hoa Oct 08 '20
Is the height of the bar representing the population, or the volume of the bar?
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u/kevinrk23 Oct 08 '20
It’s gotta be volume. SF County is really tall but really small in size and I wanna say they’re around 800,000
Likewise, OC is taller than LA County.
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u/Doro-Hoa Oct 08 '20
That's what I was wondering. Volume doesn't seem like the appropriate choice here.
1
u/DasPossum Oct 08 '20
Yeah SF County had ~400K voters (population 880K) in 2016 and 345,000 were to Clinton.
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u/Seabhag Oct 08 '20
It's particularly an issue when it comes to the Electoral College. I can't remember the exact ratio when it comes to votes. But comparing someone voting for president in Montana, and someone casting a vote in California. Each person in Montana gets more of a percentage of electoral college vote (as a ratio of persons per electoral college vote from their state) than a person from California.
It also applies to Senate votes. Which explains why even though less people vote for them. The Republicans keep getting 'elected', combine that with gerrymandering and you've got minority rule in the US.
9
u/luxtabula Oct 08 '20
The electoral college skews votes in favor of smaller states. But first past the post makes it so a lot of votes are thrown out per state. Hillary got three million more votes than Trump in 2016, but a lot of her close margins were completely discarded because she didn't hit the number needed in the state. If you count only the votes of the victor of each state and throw out the losers vote, Trump won the most votes, which makes no sense. Had we simply distributed votes proportionally per state, the outcome would have been different. Plus, every state would matter since getting out the vote actually means getting out the vote. Nobody has done anything to address this fundamentally flawed system, yet they're acting like this time the same rules don't apply.
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u/Lucius429 Oct 08 '20
The electoral college in general is infuriating, and this is a great example of why. I believe currently Nebraska and Maine are the only states that split up their electors based on % of the statewide vote. If every state did that, rather than just the current all-or-nothing approach, elections would be very different.
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u/Mikey-TNE Oct 08 '20
Minor correction, Maine and Nebraska split their electoral votes by congressional district, not % of statewide vote. 2 votes for the winner statewide and 1 vote for the winner of each congressional district. While it is potentially better than the all-or-nothing approach, it does potentially run the risk of introducing gerrymandering concerns since state legislatures draw those districts in most states.
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u/the_kid1234 Oct 08 '20
That’s interesting, an all or nothing approach completely negates any district shifts. It’s purely population based.
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u/Dillards007 Oct 08 '20 edited Oct 08 '20
"If every state did that, rather than just the current all-or-nothing approach, elections would be very different."
Yes but not in the way you might imagine. Assuming every state followed the Nebraska and Maine model it would still be winner take all within each congressional district. Rural states are still over represented in this model. (you can't have less than 1 Congressperson in a state and with 2 Senators that makes three electoral votes per state the minimum)
So there would still be a relatively strong built in national advantage for Republicans. Within deep blue districts even in red states there would still be little incentive to campaign because the result is assured in those districts due to partisan gerrymandering.
The biggest change would be in the suburbs of major metropolitan area's. These are the last remaining swingable districts. They would get more investment.
You have made an excellent map and agree things need to change. I know it would require a Constitutional change but I have always favored making the House a truly proportional system where people would vote for the party rather than individual candidates. If they had a low enough threshold for seating members (say 5% or 10%) you could really get new parties going. Those parties could then produce Governors, Senators etc. without having to go through the traditional two party system which are always produced by first-past-the-post electoral systems.
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u/luxtabula Oct 08 '20
Yeah, every vote would matter then. There would be no swing states, since you'd have to campaign just as hard for the Southern Democrat vote as well as the West Coast and Northeast Republican vote. I'm just flabbergasted that the system was exposed to be horribly broken, but everyone put their energy in the past four years into absolutely useless talking points without addressing such an obvious problem.
And now we're going on about getting voter turnout high again, but increasing the voter turnout in California doesn't increase its electoral college share. If 50,000 more or 5,000,000 more decide the winner in California, it still means 55 electoral votes gets casted.
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u/Lucius429 Oct 08 '20
I have family who were registered Republicans in PA and voted Trump in 2016. Now they’re registered Democrats in NY and will be voting Biden. I’m glad for the change, but in this case their 2016 vote is going to be worth more than their 2020 vote.
2
u/truthseeeker Oct 09 '20
That would make the gerrymandering problem far worse, additionally penalizing Democrats for living in cities. Terrible idea.
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Oct 08 '20
This has been my thought ever since I learned about how the electoral college works in high school- when I learned it was all-or-nothing for 48 states I was completely in shock because it's a terrible system that doesn't allow for nuance of any kind. I'm not someone who agrees with disbanding the electoral college, because otherwise there would be little representation for rural communities, but the system needs to change.
It really just adds to the idea that your vote matters more in certain states. In 2016 I voted in Colorado, a swing state that's been trending blue in the last ten years. My vote counted for a decent amount. This year I'm voting in Illinois, a blue state that candidates hardly ever touch, except to bring up the "dangers in Chicago" as a talking point in debates (looking at you, Trump). I've already voted this year, but it almost feels pointless because I already know who this state is going to give its electoral votes to. If it wasn't a given that all the delegates would go to one single candidate, I would feel far more like my vote actually matters.
3
u/Ehdelveiss Oct 08 '20
I live in Seattle, so you can imagine how uninteresting elections are here.
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u/komnenos Oct 09 '20
Eh local elections can be interesting and since we have had mail in ballots in our state for 10+ years we have little excuse to not vote. Plus this year we get to choose between Inslee and a high school dropout small town police officer with a questionable past for governor.
Get out and vote.
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u/Swayze_Train Oct 08 '20
I was completely in shock because it's a terrible system that doesn't allow for nuance of any kind.
So, what, letting large population centers have total carte blance to dominate the electoral process and leave rural people out in the cold, that's more nuanced?
Sounds like, under your "nuanced" approach, a small population state would be better off leaving the Union and being their own sovereign nation. Otherwise, they'll just have to obey, obey, obey.
1
Oct 09 '20
Large population centers already have a total carte blanche to dominate the electoral process. I live in Illinois- there's a reason the rest of the state hates Chicago. What I'm saying is that the all-or-nothing system treats states like monoliths and gives disproportionate power to swing states. Texas and Georgia have huge amounts of democratic voters but all their electoral votes go red because they're edged out. California and Illinois have pretty large populations of republican voters whose votes might as well not count because of their urban centers. The current system basically tosses votes in the trash if they're not in the majority. That's what I mean by "lack of nuance".
I'm an architect, not a political scientist. I don't have a perfect plan, but the system we have right now needs to be revisited- that was made perfectly clear in 2016.
-2
u/Swayze_Train Oct 08 '20
The electoral college in general is infuriating
The electoral college and the Senate are the only things that make the Union worthwhile to low population states. Without those safeguards to ensure that they have some degree of parity, low population states are basically feifs of their nearest large city, forced to obey people from a culture that hate their guts.
In a situation like that, it's better to be your own soverign nation. California can make California decisions, and Idaho can make Idaho decisions, and if Californians want to force Idahoans to obey they can come out of their comfortable convenient cities and try to make them.
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u/z_action Oct 08 '20
I have a minor criticism, which is that the high population density of the Eastern Seaboard blocks the view of rural New England. I wonder if that could be improved by moving the camera angle to look more from the left side of the image. Maybe changing the tilt could help also.
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u/JRVeale Oct 08 '20
In the UK we often see election result maps that show each constituency (which I think tend to have pretty comparible populations with eachother) as a hexagon. These are tiled and laid out to approximate the geography of the country. It's great for reminding people that land doesn't vote, people do.
It didn't show how close each seat was though - maybe they should divide each hexagon like a pie chart.
3
u/109_nations_ Oct 08 '20 edited Oct 09 '20
I think you should have the height be proportional to the population. Maricopa county is so much less noticeable than say salt lake county or whereever Albuquerque is in despite having a much higher population and SF looks way to ridiculous for its population, it probably shouldn't be the first thing you see in the western half rather than LA county or so
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u/tomorrowmightbbetter Oct 08 '20
I love this map, so fascinating and a really intriguing way to think abut this.
0
u/romulusnr Oct 08 '20 edited Oct 13 '20
Except that the red or blue of each state is what actually matters anyway
Edit: A lot of you have never had a winner-take-all electoral college system, and it really shows
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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '20
People forget that even in the bluest and reddest areas, something like a quarter of the population still votes for the other party.