Maps: What the 2012 election would have looked like before universal suffrage

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Chris G on November 11, 2012 at 10:07pm

I find it difficult to impossible to believe that a majority of white men voted republican in California

Permalink Reply by David Layton on November 11, 2012 at 11:48pm

Chris - California is like many of the "blue" states, particularly here in the west. The cities are very democratic, while everywhere else is really republican. We're talking Alabama style republican. It is just that the city population is about 2 to 1 over everywhere else. This means that highly diverse Los Angeles is so democratic that it swamps old white boy Bakersfield.

Permalink Reply by Chris G on November 12, 2012 at 12:22am

I used to live in NE Oregon where most of the people there were real religious and real conservative - not to mention a few other things. The Eastern Side of Oregon and Washington are like different states (from the Western side). I forgot about the inland and Eastern part of California.

Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on November 13, 2012 at 10:46pm

Isn't southern Cal conservative?

Permalink Reply by David Layton on November 13, 2012 at 11:39pm

Ruth - You are thinking of Orange County and Northern San Diego County. Los Angeles county is pretty liberal.

Permalink Reply by Grinning Cat on November 13, 2012 at 4:40pm

Another important criticism of maps like these, quite apart from the all-or-nothing coloring scheme, is that they suggest "one acre, one vote" rather than "one person, one vote".

Cartograms can correct for this, distorting the map to bring areas in line with population (or the number of electoral votes, or whatever numbers are of interest). From "Views of the World":

(See also www.worldmapper.org .)

Permalink Reply by Chris G on November 13, 2012 at 7:36pm

Here's another map showing vote distribution. 

Sorry I didn't keep the source information.

Permalink Reply by Grinning Cat on November 13, 2012 at 9:05pm

Thanks for that map, which addresses both of my criticisms!

Google image search to the rescue...

It looks like the map of county results from Mark Newman's Election Maps page:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2012/
where each county is colored in a nonlinear, "contrast enhanced" scheme: red for 70% or more Republican, through shades of purple, to blue for 70% or more Democratic.

(Some of his maps were also shown in a Daily Kos article.)

Permalink Reply by Chris G on November 14, 2012 at 1:55am

You're right it was from Mark Newman. What did you use for a search query to find that? Search: 2012 Republican Democrat presidential election result map?

It's the best map I've seen so far. It would be nice to be able to zoom on it.

Here's a map of the 2008 presidential election that showed how each precinct voted. I live in Napa CA, in the North San Francisco Bay Area. There was only one precinct that voted more R on this map.

Permalink Reply by Grinning Cat on November 14, 2012 at 1:18pm

I right-clicked on your picture, "Copy Image Location" (in Firefox; "Copy Shortcut" in Internet Explorer; should be something similar in other browsers). Then in Google image search, I click on the camera icon, which lets you enter the URL of an image to match.

There's actually a quicker way: if both the image and a Google image search page are on your screen, in different windows, you can drag the picture to the Google search box.

Permalink Reply by Chris G on November 15, 2012 at 1:07am

Thanks. I had the image on my computer and didn't realize the numbers in the title would show up because I saved it under a different name. That's a handy tip.