I'd first like to mention that the original cartograms were made by Mark Newman, from the University of Michigan, who put them up on the internet free to use (in the form of a Creative Commons Licence).
All I did here was, well, I noticed that his "purple" county level map didn't show state boundaries, so I meticulously added them manually, which took a while.
When you look at most maps, the US looks almost like two totally separate countries, but really, the US is quite purple.
I hope this thread can serve as a way to discuss his excellent map collection, which can be found here:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2012/I'll start the topic with a few points:
-Nevada is almost unrecognizable, being dominated by Clark County.
-Staten Island is much redder than the rest of New York.
-The center of Republicanism in the Deep South is northern Georgia, which counters Atlanta's deep blue.
-You can clearly see the Washington suburbs spilling into Maryland and Virginia.
Just to mention, a good measure of the 50/50 purple is Anne Arundel County, Maryland; one of the closest races in the election. It's the county directly northeast of the deep blue Washington suburbs in Maryland. It borders Chesapeake Bay.
