Something about an election.

Yeah, I've been away for a while. October was haunt season -- I'm a monster! -- and late October/early November are basically the heaviest season in terms of my liturgical year.

And now I have the World's Most Hideous Head Cold. Which is, you know, hilarious because people make awesome faces when I try to talk and this ghastly noise comes out.

But yes, crud aside, I am alive and thinky. And what has me most fascinated today is how we can best visualize the votes cast in the latest US election. Because man, I cannot stop looking at these.

Most of us have already seen the basic electoral map, showing 332 to 206 in favor of Obama:

Which looks pretty straightforward. Red states, blue states, and a big number at the top. Thing is, while the Electoral College is a pretty straightforward thing (with the exception of Maine and Nebraska, both of which can split their states' votes according to congressional district), it's not like voters in these states ALL vote red or blue. In reality, these things look a bit more like this:

Likewise, the basic map above tends to skew the data presented by simply coloring in land mass. Montana's huge red blodge seems more massive than Rhode Island's wee blue one until you do something like this:

So is the basic electoral map useless? I don't think so. But I do think it creates misconceptions about what the actual data looks like, and that these other visualizations can make clearer the actual shape of the results.

(Note: the electoral map is from HuffPo, the other two were circulating on Facebook.)

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com