Margin of Victory Map

[nescio17]

I'm a huge, huge fan of Julianne's map.  I had a few tweaks I wanted to make, so I did so:

Comments

[kimberkit]

You know, the sad bit is that I had to ask Neil to identify half of those states... couldn't identify them just on their own. A testament to Kim's Mad Geography Skillz :P

[nescio17]

Don't worry, I had Carolyn beside me and we did a fair amount of wavering over which state was which. If you look closely, the map also has a box with islands in the bottom, which was even more confusing. Obama won 90% of the vote in the Virgin Islands--and it took me a while to identify which of the ilttle islands were the Virgin islands. I learned that there are multiple Virgin Islands and I needed to look for the U.S. Virgin Islands.

[nescio17]

That's a good idea. I was trying to make blue th ecolor for a tie or a very close election and make it more green the closer it went to Obama and more purple the more it went for Hillary.

[recursivepizza]

I agree re: colors. I definitely found the colors confusing when first looking at it. It wouldn't even have to be eight shades of green, even something like green -> blue would be much easier to read. The problem with green -> purple is that you have to go through blue to get there, and just from looking at the map it isn't clear which colors are supposed to be at the ends and which are in the middle. You have to look at the key to interpret the map, which as every good Tufte-ite knows is a big no-no.

[nescio17]

Did I preemptively call Mississippi? Sorry about that. I must have mistaken if for a different state. Crap. I'll fix that. Also, it's very funny to have friends who are so much more graphically inclined than I am.

Also, I'm glad to know that the disappearance of FL and MI was noticed. It makes the country look funny.

[nescio17]

I figured out which one was Mississippi by following the river/border down from Illinois/Iowa and guessing that Mississippi was indeed on the Mississippi River.