My Purple America

Those red and blue maps always make the country look more Republican than it is. For one, rural areas which tend to be more Republican cover more acreage, and for another red and blue ignore both the red sentiment in the blue areas and the blue sentiment in the red areas. Enough already with all the secession talk. Let's paint a more accurate picture instead.



Here we divide by county, then represent each county's size in proportion to its human population, and color each according to the percentage of the vote that went to the R or D choices.

Thanks to Gastner, Shalizi, and Newman at the U of Mich for the graphic.