VoteHub has released a precinct-level map of the 2024 U.S. presidential election results that includes vote density as well as margin—in other words, taking into account how many votes are in a district, not just by how much (tempering the fact of winning 90% of the vote in a district with the fact that there are only 100 votes to be had in the district, say). [Maps Mania]
Politico looks at what they call Donald Trump’s “cartographic compulsion”—the ways that maps have turned up in his political career over and over, from his use of election maps to Sharpie-gate in his first term, to his musings on Canada, Greenland and Gaza, plus his propensity to rename things, in the early days of his second. That his obsession with Canada and Greenland might be chalked up to how big they appear on a map—especially a Mercator projection of the world—comes as little surprise. Kenneth Field covered much of the same territory, at least as far as his first term is concerned, in this 2019 piece; for my previous coverage of this nonsense see posts tagged Trump.
Both Australia and Canada had federal elections last week. Both countries have overwhelmingly urban populations (Australia 87%, Canada 82%) and vast tracts of sparsely populated territory, which means that strictly geographical election maps of both countries suffer from the “empty land doesn’t vote” problem. But that doesn’t seem to stop such maps from being used.
As I posted about the maps of the last Canadian federal election in 2019 (1, 2, 3), most static election maps in Canada use the Lambert projection, whereas online maps generally use Web Mercator; cartograms and such aren’t really a thing. I suspect that this is a combination of the Lambert being very familiar to Canadians (it’s pretty much the default projection for static maps) whereas a cartogram isn’t: it’s easier and less disorienting to use the Lambert with inset maps, or zoom in on Web Mercator. Canadians aren’t dumb: we know that there are lots of seats in and around Toronto and Montreal, and that hardly anyone lives in Nunavut, and even zooming all the way out in Web Mercator won’t fool us. Besides, with four parties capable of winning expansive rural or northern seats, the urban-rural split isn’t quite as binary as it is elsewhere, so the urgency of correcting the map by showing votes or seats—the need to say land doesn’t vote—isn’t quite there.
I haven’t seen many maps of the 2024 U.S. presidential election results, but then I haven’t been looking very hard for them either. Last week, CNN posted some charts and maps showing where the candidates under- or overperformed relative to the 2020 election. “Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that in the states where the campaign was the most hotly contested, more people voted in 2024, whereas in states where one side or the other seemed more likely to win, turnout generallydropped.”
There’s more than one way to depict data on a map. At the last Esri user conference, Sarah Bell, Kenneth Field and John Nelson demonstrated different ways to map the results of the last U.K. parliamentary election, and how they changed from the previous election. The video of their presentation is attendee-only, but Ken and John have posted about how they each went about their tasks: here’s Ken’s post and here’s John’s; plus, as is his wont, John has posted a video.
The Map Men look at gerrymandering on U.S. electoral district maps. A reasonably comprehensive primer on the subject even if comes from a couple of Brits baffled by the subject. And they finish with a surprisingly sharp point: gerrymanderers wouldn’t know how to draw maps like these if voting intentions weren’t predictable.
Yesterday, U.S. Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris announced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. Among other things, Walz is a former social studies teacher and early adopter of GIS as a teaching tool, and has nerded out on geography and GIS throughout his political career, both in the U.S. House of Representatives and as governor. Walz even spoke at the 2024 Esri User Conference in San Diego last month (as someone married to a high school teacher, I can say this: he totally talks like a high school teacher). See also this summary of the talk, and Walz’s map nerdery in general, in the Minnesota Reformer.
The U.S. congressional electoral map was redrawn after the 2020 census, but now parts are being redrawn again. ABC News has a page tracking developments in what they call midcycle redistricting. “More than a half-dozen states face the prospect of having to go through the redistricting process again, mostly due to federal and/or state litigation over racial or partisan gerrymandering concerns. Both Democrats and Republicans have the opportunity to flip seats in districts drawn more favorably than they were last cycle. For example, Democrats appear poised to pick up at least one seat in Alabama and could theoretically get more favorable maps in Louisiana and Georgia. Republicans, meanwhile, could benefit from more favorable 2024 maps in North Carolina and New Mexico.”
There has been an outbreak of anti-trans legislation at the state level in the United States, and Erin Reed has spent the last three years tracking it. Her anti-trans legislative risk map measures the extent to which trans people are endangered by such legislation, whether it’s already on the books or could be the offing before the next election. The map reveals, no surprise, a polarized America: one where some states are racing to put anti-trans laws on the books while others enact protections and set themselves up as safe harbours.
A shoutout to Keir Clarke at Maps Mania, whose coverage of election maps is such that whenever I think, “hey, that country just had an election, I ought to write a post collecting some maps of the results,” I usually find that Keir has already beaten me to the punch.
Leading up to last Saturday’s federal election in Australia, ABC News Australia had a page explaining the usual problem with geographic electoral maps when sparsely populated rural districts are enormous and lots of voters are concentrated in the cities. Calling the page “The Australian electoral map has been lying to you” might have been torquing things a bit, though. Then again, via Maps Mania, live election results maps from The Australian and The Guardian both use straight geographic maps, so maybe not.
Julien Gaffuri’s map of the second-round results of the French presidential election is, as you can see, extraordinarily busy—and, by the way, extremely processor-intensive: it will slow down your machine—because it’s at the commune level and each circle is scaled to population. (News flash: Paris has lots of people in it.) And those circles are striped circles: the proportion of the votes is indicated by the area taken up by a given colour. The map of the first round results shows more stripes (because more candidates) but is by department, so it’s a little easier both to read and to see how the striped circle format works. It’s an interesting alternative to a choropleth map, and a bit less ambiguous.
France 24’s interactive map (right) covers both first and second rounds and shows results by region, department and commune. It is annoyingly unlabelled, which is a surprising choice for France’s English-language news service. Le Monde’s map uses a similar colour scheme—yellow/orange for Macron, grey/brown for Le Pen—but at least has mouseover labels.
Le Parisien’s maps aren’t interactive, nor are they particularly large, but they illustrate other aspects of the results, like the abstentions, voter turnout and differences vs. the 2017 vote. The Guardian’s maps are low on detail but provide similar information. Libération’s map, on the other hand, is a cluttered mess, showing each commune as a proportionally sized dot. [Maps Mania]
Some maps showing the results of the first round of France’s 2022 presidential election. Le Monde’s interactive map shows the winner by commune: it has all the caveats you’d expect from a geographical map (the cities have a lot of voters but not much territory, making Le Pen’s rural support look more impressive). Bloomberg’s maps are behind a paywall: see this Twitter thread instead, which has maps of the regional concentrations of each candidate’s support. (With a dozen candidates on the ballot, it’s hard to get a true picture from a single map.) Also on Twitter, Dominic Royé’s dasymetric maps of the results [Maps Mania].
Leading up to last Saturday’s federal election in Australia, ABC News Australia had 
