Visualizing The Election

Via Instapundit, we find a very interesting piece of post-election analysis on TCS. The author’s primary concern was not so much Red Statism vs. Blue Statism as it was the relationship between population density and political beliefs. After considering the trend towards urbanization and the higher probability that city-dwellers will be liberal, he concludes:

The statistician’s perennial caveat is that “correlation is not causation,” but there is little doubt that there is connection, largely unexplained, between ideology and demography. Depressingly deterministic as it is, this correlation, if it continues, may mean that future elections will be decided by immigration patterns, reproductive rates and technologies that allow more businesses and workers to locate in suburban and rural locations.

I would be happy to be proven wrong.

The outcome of these trends seems less than certain; Americans are certainly urbanizing, but those of the Red disposition tend to have more children than do the Blue. I don’t know where the numbers really point when all is said and done. In any event, the most interesting part of the article was a bit of data visualization work done by Michael Gastner, Cosma Shalizi, and Mark Newman of the University of Michigan. I have mirrored their graphics here in compliance with their Creative Commons License, but by all means check out their analysis firsthand.

By now we’re all quite familiar with this picture showing the electoral college results. It perfectly captures the data it is intended to capture, but it quite misleading if it is pressed into service as an icon of the Great Divide that has suddenly gripped America. After all, the current vote tally is 60,607,335 to 57,286,778 (51.4% to 48.6%), and this map looks a whole lot redder than that.

My kids are even more impressed with the same map by counties. Look at all the red! Bush is triumphant! We need never fear the election of another Democrat in our whole lives! Well, maybe.

Everyone–even my kids, at least those older than five–knows that the Blue States have higher population densities, which is why this adjusted map of the states is close to the coolest thing you’ve seen all day. It’s called a “cartogram,” and it features state shapes that are distored such that their area is proportional to their population. Much more helpful. The same image by counties gets us somewhat closer to the 51/49% near-parity we see in the aggregate popular vote tally.

But no need to stop there! We are still coloring the counties either Bush Red or Kerry Blue based on who won 50% + 1 of the votes. This will produce quantization error that may well be more systematic than random; indeed, a glance at the county cartogram still tells you it’s a win for Bush, which still doesn’t jibe with the relatively narrow margin of the raw tally. What to do? Well, refine the coloring algorithm, of course!

This map by counties starts to get you there. It’s a much purpler country than you may have thought, given the more strident forms of sore-loser moonbattery we’ve seen. The whole excercise culimates in this linearly-colored cartogram by counties. That image is a purple smear–you can’t take a quick glance at it and say who won. And rightly so; a quick peek at 51 Junior Mints mixed in with 49 Raisenettes would reveal nothing about the relatively narrow edge the edible candy held over the pre-packaged human rights violations.

And don’t get me wrong here: a 3.3 million-vote victory is downright vehement compared to the squeaker four years ago. Still, the hyperventilating about the painful rending of the Republic in our day may be a bit overstated. If you start to think civil war is imminent, just remember the linear county cartogram. It’s not so bad.

And hey, four more years. Smile.

UNFORMED FURTHER THOUGHT: This is not to deny that we have a fairly profound divide between the emerging stakeholders in the Democratic party and the Red State Consensus. The people crying “Jesusland!” are not make believe, and they are not altogether off target. Maybe more on this later, maybe not. Let me know if you’re interested.