"Red scare" made less scary
I already posted this as a comment on another blog, but I thought it would be at least as appropriate (and encouraging) to post here:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/
It's a page comparing the U.S. political maps we've been seeing this election with a more balanced depiction using cartograms. They distort the geography to depict area proportional to population, and represent closely contested areas with appropriate shades of purple, thus adjusting for huge and lightly populated areas and narrowly won states and counties. The effect is a much more intuitive, less depressing way to look at the electorate, and it avoids the "acreage" bias so apparent in the red/blue maps we've seen so much this season.
Call me cynical, but I suspect that these sorts of adjustments and alternative depictions would already be in common use in the mainstream media were the poll numbers reversed.
posted by Carl @ 1:35 PM
5 Comments:
Carl,
The maps are cool and they really put things in perspective. There is another great one out there that was shown by Jon Stewart on election night. Actually it was Rob Corddry who presented the map to the audience. It was the US with just the swing states, in other words: "the states that mattered". Another cool idea, this one also funny. Check
http://www.comedycentral.com/tv_shows/thedailyshowwithjonstewart/
Election Night Live at about 7 min 30 sec. into the video.
Nora
Narl,
Those maps definitely put things into proportion.
Check out his series of maps that shows all sorts of great statistics about the US and ends with a 3D map of election results...
Animated Results
OK, this map pretty much sums up the entire election.
--Joe
United States of Canada
Joe,
The animated maps are great. Thank you for sharing the site.
Nora
Yesterday, CNN played a little segment on the 'alternative maps', showing all the maps developed at U. of M. linked in the original comment here, Carl. Of course you're not cynical at all: the segment was introduced as a 'funny' commentary, as an odd thing done by resentful liberals that can't digest the results of the election. The winners of this election, or more precisely, those that believe that because Bush won then they're winners too, tend to dismiss this type of 'corrections' as intelectual exercises. The subliminal (or not so much so...) value of CNN's reporting is undeniable and it perpetuates and enhances the already dangerous divisions among us. It could have been used as educational, promoting it as the fair thing to do so that people, everybody, really knows what is going on. Instead, it was shown as a funny piece to poke fun at disgruntled 'losers', giving the winners one more reason to look down on us for our 'insurgent' denial of the election results...
GB
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