Vox, earlier this year, used maps to explain the fairly profound ideological shifts in the two major U.S. political parties over their respective histories: How Republicans went from the party of Lincoln to the party of Trump, in 13 maps and 23 maps that explain how Democrats went from the party of racism to the party of Obama.
Author: Jonathan Crowe
Jonathan Crowe blogs about maps at The Map Room. His essays and reviews have been published by AE, Calafia, The New York Review of Science Fiction, the Ottawa Citizen, Strange Horizons and Tor.com. He lives in Shawville, Quebec.
Electionland Map Tracks Search Interest in Voting Issues
The Electionland Google Trends map visualizes voting issues during today’s electoral process. It’s based on real-time Google search interest (rather than actual reported problems) in five issues: inactive voter status, long wait times, provisional ballots, voting machine problems and voter intimidation. More about the map and how it works. [Maps Mania]
Gerrymandered Congressional Districts
In 2014 the Washington Post’s Christopher Ingraham reported on the most gerrymandered congressional districts in the United States. The article was accompanied by an interactive map, showing the compactness score Ingraham calculated for each district—the more compact an electoral district, the less likely it’s a gerrymander. [Dave Smith]
(Gerrymandering—manipulating electoral district boundaries for political advantage—has been a frequent topic here on The Map Room. Previous entries include ‘There Is More to Gerrymandering Than Ugly Shapes’, The New York Times on Gerrymandering, Gerrymandering in Florida, More on Gerrymandering and Computer-Generated Districts, Computer-Generated Electoral Districts Redux, Gerrymandering as Computer Game and U.S. Electoral District Ballot Initiatives.)
Two Looks Back at the 2012 Results
Before we’re inundated by the results from the 2016 U.S. presidential election, here are a couple of looks back at the 2012 election that explore the results from slightly different angles.
This map shows the county-by-county results but the intensity is by raw vote totals, not percentages: the darker the colour, the more actual votes there are. It’s an attempt to compensate for counties of different sizes, but you still end up with distortions if the county is both large and populous. [Maptitude]
Most Democratic strength is in the cities; most Republican strength is in rural areas. This map depicts the opposites: the urban counties won by Mitt Romney in 2012 and the rural counties where Obama won. [Maps on the Web]
Suffrage Maps
With Hillary Clinton quite possibly on the verge of being elected the first woman president of the U.S., it’s not surprising that some attention has been given to the women’s suffrage movement of the late 19th and early 20th century. The suffrage movement used maps to make the case for voting rights for women, particularly as western states began to extend the franchise to women in advance of the 19th Amendment. Yesterday Atlas Obscura posted a selection of suffrage maps from the P. J. Mode Collection of Persuasive Cartography at Cornell University Library (search results). And the British Library’s Twitter account posted this suffragist flyer this morning:
The Map Proves It: this #election map was published by the National American Woman Suffrage Association c.1914. See it on display in #BLMaps pic.twitter.com/VDiL8ISDbY
— The British Library (@britishlibrary) November 8, 2016
London Corrected
We’ve seen geographically accurate maps of the London Underground, in which the Tube map is corrected for geography. In London Corrected, the geography is corrected for the Tube map. (The interface allows you to fade between the distorted road map and the Tube map.) [Mark Ovenden]
A Map of When the Polls Close Tomorrow
Tomorrow is Election Day in the United States. The liberal political blog Daily Kos has produced the above map of poll closing times; I presume it’s accurate.
Update: The New York Times also has maps of poll closing times.
The Bunting Quest
Australian writer Steven Marcuson’s novel,
A Little Bit More About Bellerby & Co.
Bellerby & Co., maker of hand-made, bespoke and very expensive globes,
Previously: Atlas Obscura Profiles Peter Bellerby; Globemaker Peter Bellerby Interviewed.
Mapping Swiss Mortality
Earlier this year, a study in the Swiss Medical Weekly explored the spatial patterns of Swiss mortality rates between 2008 and 2012. The study looked at the most common causes of death and produced a number of maps.
Acadian Archives Exhibits Private Collection of Historic Maps
The Acadian Archives at the University of Maine at Fort Kent is hosting an exhibit of historic maps from the private collection of Jacques LaPointe.
The thirty-nine maps on display range widely in geography and in time. The earliest maps circa 1522-1532 are depictions of “Discovering America” according to seven cartographers of different European countries. The most recent maps reveal the United States’ claim to the “highlands” of Témiscouata and Britain’s claim to the “highlands” of Mars Hill, Maine before a compromise led to the Treaty of Webster-Ashburton of August 9, 1842 and the adoption of the St. John River as the international boundary between New Brunswick and Maine.
Bangor Daily News coverage. (Fort Kent is in northern Maine on the Canadian border, near Edmundston, New Brunswick.) [WMS]
A Map of Southeast Asia’s Future Rail Lines
Travel blogger James Clark has created a subway-style map of southeast Asia that shows every rail line that currently exists, is under construction, or proposed.
What would Southeast Asia look like if it had a fully functioning railway network? I have thought about this many times, usually while on a bus ride from hell (Huay Xai to Luang Prabang springs to mind). […]
Over the years I’ve bookmarked news articles reporting railway lines that are under construction, or have been proposed to be built. Compiling all this data I have created a map of what Southeast Asia could look like if all of those lines were built, combined with current railways.
James warns that he’s included every proposed line, “no matter how ridiculous,” so bear that in mind. It’s also available as a poster. [CityLab]
Opening Today: British Library Exhibition on 20th-Century Maps
Maps and the 20th Century: Drawing the Line opens today at the British Library. It runs until 1 March 2017. Admission is £12, with reduced-price and free admissions in some cases.
The Guardian’s Mark Brown and the Spectator’s Stephen Bayley have long and thoughtful pieces about the exhibition. The Independent’s Simon Calder is somewhat more solipsistic, but observes that this exhibition “might prove to be a wintry retrospective on the summer of peak cartography.”
There was also a segment on BBC Breakfast (using music from The Lord of the Rings was a bit of cognitive dissonance); the clip is available on Twitter:
The joy of maps: @GrahamSatchell has had a sneak preview of @BLMaps @BritishLibrary pic.twitter.com/Bfof8ODYzm
— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) November 3, 2016
The British Library’s Maps and Views blog has a sample of the maps on display.
As you’d expect from a major exhibition like this, a companion book is out this week from the British Library. It’s available from Amazon UK in both hardcover and paperback; those of us in North America will have to wait a bit until it turns up here.
Previously: British Library Exhibition on 20th Century Maps Opening in November.
Gatineau Crime Map
I live 45 minutes outside the western Quebec city of Gatineau, which itself lies just across the river from Canada’s capital city, Ottawa. Yesterday Gatineau’s police service launched a crime map that shows seven categories of crime—arson, assault, break-ins, robbery, theft from a vehicle, theft of a vehicle, and vandalism. The cops are careful to stress (media release in French) that the map is for informational purposes only; the data isn’t suitable for data-crunching, and the locations aren’t precise enough to pinpoint specific buildings.
Mi’kmaw Place Names Digital Atlas
A guide to Mi’kmaw place names in Nova Scotia, the Mi’kmaw Place Names Digital Atlas was unveiled last year. It’s “an interactive map showing more than 700 place names throughout Nova Scotia, and includes pronunciation, etymology, and other features, such as video interviews with Mi’kmaw Elders.” Flash required (really?). [CBC News]