Stanford Election Atlas

[johnbuterbaugh]

I thought this project Stanford did was well-done. It's a map of 2008 presidential election precinct results but instead of using a choropleth map, they use dots of varying sizes and colors to represent party preference. When you zoom in or out, the image resolves so that the dots are an appropriate size. You can also view as separate layers by census tracts the predominant race, median household income, and number of potential voters. It might be a good resource if someone wants to do a choropleth map instead of a dot map, but then again it doesn't provide shapefiles or names of precincts, etc., etc. But I wouldn't be surprised if political campaigns referenced this project in the future.
http://atlas.esri.com/Atlas/VoterAtlas.html

[johnbuterbaugh]

Wow, that's incredible!  Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

Visually I prefer the choropleth map (which can be viewed for most states on DRA) but this map more closely resembles population and margin.  (Whereas a national red/blue map by precinct just looks even more disjointed from the results than the county map does, as most rural areas of suburban/urban Obama counties vote GOP)

I agree. The choropleth map does serve its purposes visually, but the dot map is less misleading in many ways. Where can I find the DRA maps?

[johnbuterbaugh]

Okay, thanks.

[johnbuterbaugh]

 Decided to compile all the DRA's 2008 election maps into one national map. Here it is.

[johnbuterbaugh]

That's a possibility, but I didn't do this project in ArcGIS. I had to stitch all the state maps together one-by-one. I understand why you might want to see what that looks like so that cities don't just look like black cobwebs. If anything this map is a map of how rural America voted if nothing else.