November 14, 2004
Purple America Revisited
I'm sure everybody has seen one of the "Purple America" maps, in which states or counties are colored on a scale from red to purple to blue indicating the fraction of the Republican (red) and Democrat (blue) vote in each location. Here is an example, courtesy of Robert Vanderbei:
This made me, a Democrat, feel better. The map looks reassuringly bluish. But then I started wondering whether this might not be misleading, beause the 50/50 color, purple, somehow seems more blue than red to me. So I've been trying to find a map in which blue indicates Republican and red indicates Democrat. Robert Vanderbei was kind enough to produce such a map. Right now the legend is still showing red as Republican, but the map itself is correct:
As you can see, the country looks disturbingly blue.
Posted by cradle at November 14, 2004 12:26 PMwell done, David. Now I'm afraid again.
Seriously, it's interesting how our eye sees blue (light) more clearly than red (light) on the computer screen. This was often a problem I noticed while developing digital pics at the Ritz.
Wow, the Bush ticket really won. Hmm. Is there a book out called "Starting a Liberal Think-tanks for Dummies" yet?
Yes, but -- and I'm sure you know this, but have possibly temporarily forgotten -- the map is deceptive in a more important way, which is that it shows everything by land area. Make all of Wyoming blood red, and it looks like a huge hotbed of conservatism, but it's really meaningless electorally. If everything were contorted so that districts were all sized in proportion to their electorate rather than by area, the upper map would be bluer than it is, 'cause liberal folks like the city -- or city life makes folks liberal, not sure of the direction of causality here.
The only way in which the original map is meaningful is that you will spend a l-o-n-g time driving through "Jesusland" to get from the East Coast to the West Coast. But you won't see many people along the way.
Posted by: Bob S at November 17, 2004 02:36 AMBob S: may I recommend http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election