2008 Nationwide Precinct Map Project - (Mostly) Complete!

[homelycooking]

I think this is a fantastic idea, but I see a few potential problems with this:

1. The finished image is likely to be so large as to be incompatible with most devices. Granted, I work on a PC made in 2007 and am not aware of the performance of newer machines with respect to huge images, but I can't imagine that it would be possible to work with an image in MS Paint much larger than 10,000 pixels². It would be impossible for me even to create a basemap at this zoom level of Texas or California.

2. Even with the zoom level selected, precincts in the major cities will be almost indistinguishable from one another and impossible to color. I think it might be a good idea to use insets.

3. A minor consideration: Within the state of Maryland, some precinct boundaries show detail of the coastline (Worcester) and some don't (Anne Arundel). I hate that. When I made my 2012 precinct map of Maryland, I drew in the coastline by hand where necessary, but it added hours of boring work to the project.

[homelycooking]

New York City at zoom level 10:

[homelycooking]

My approach to dealing with this problem is usually to zoom way out, so that working with the whole image is feasible. Then you zoom in for insets, lots of 'em. My thinking is generally that seeing a population center in detail is more important than seeing it directly within the context of the surrounding geography.

The other option is to keep a city like New York at the same scale as the rest of the state. You'll still be able to broadly see that the city is heavily Democratic, but picking out an individual precinct or neighborhood would be impossible.

Here's an extreme example of the insets approach:



Many of those towns would simply appear black (from the precinct boundaries) if there were no insets - the shades of blue wouldn't even be visible. Even at this zoom level, I still had to break Alberta into three parts in order to be at all able to work with the images!

[homelycooking]

Philadelphia, Chicago, Northern New Jersey, South Florida and San Francisco come to mind.

[homelycooking]

I think the density of voting district boundaries in the Central Valley is giving the false impression at that zoom level that it's very dark blue.

[homelycooking]

A terrific idea well executed. It's such a shame that this sort of information is so difficult and expensive to acquire. Short of a well-financed Herculean effort, it will take an effort on the part of many more states to make their election data accessible before a future election is similarly map-able. cinyc, Adam, congratulations and well done.