More variations on the Red/Blue maps

[Mercutio]

I apologize if this has been done to death on this subforum, but my sister just sent this to me today, and a cursory inspection of titles here did not show it as already posted.

This site has a wide variety of different interpretations of the red/blue states, or counties, or electoral votes, or what have you...For instance

The (contiguous 48) states of the country are colored red or blue to indicate whether a majority of their voters voted for the Republican candidate (George W. Bush) or the Democratic candidate (John F. Kerry) respectively. The map gives the superficial impression that the "red states" dominate the country, since they cover far more area than the blue ones. However, as pointed out by many others, this is misleading because it fails to take into account the fact that most of the red states have small populations, whereas most of the blue states have large ones. The blue may be small in area, but they are large in terms of numbers of people, which is what matters in an election.

We can correct for this by making use of a cartogram, 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, states with more people appearing larger than states with fewer, regardless of their actual area on the ground. Thus, on such a map, the state of Rhode Island, with its 1.1 million inhabitants, would appear about twice the size of Wyoming, which has half a million, even though Wyoming has 60 times the acreage of Rhode Island.

Of course, the site has all the actual pictures, too...

 

[Mycroft]

This is America:

This is America on drugs:

Any questions?

 

[Frank Newgent]

Man, this Red State-Blue State stuff is sooo pre-11/19.

 

[Patrick]

Notice how the blue parts look like a parasitic virus trying to infect the boundaries.

 

[Dorian Gray]

Notice how the red parts look like the bloodstained rug in Patrick's barn, right next to the pen full of chickens?

 

[BPSCG]

Notice how it's impossible to walk from anywhere along the Canadian border to anywhere along the Mexican one without walking in "red America"? Or from the east coast to the west?

 

[Frank Newgent]

Recent neuroimaging studies suggest that human REM sleep is characterized by a specific pattern of regional brain activity...brain areas in red activated during sequences of visual distortions and delusional misidentifications.

 

[geni]

Any questions?

Which drugs?

 

[Mycroft]

Which drugs?

If you want to score something good, it's best to contact me by pm.

 

[Luke T.]

The geography may not seem important until you think about an electoral tie. In such a case, the vote goes to the House of Representatives and each state gets only one vote.