I'm hoping to be able to do some cool stuff for you guys regarding votes in the Congress once business gets underway next month. Toward that end, I've been playing around with various ways to represent the new Congress geographically -- and this is what I've come up with so far:
For those of you who haven't had your morning coffee yet, the little numbers represent the respective Congressional Districts in each state.
There are, obviously, a couple of different trade-offs at play here. On the one hand, you'd like the the shape of each "state" to bear some resemblence to its real-life counterpart. On the other hand, you want the states that share borders in real life to also share borders in the cartogram. And furthermore, it would be nice to have the Congressional Districts within each state in some sort of reasonably representative geography -- which isn't easy in a state like New York where three-quarters of the districts are in New York City and its immediate suburbs.
Accomplishing all of those things with one cartogram is, I've determined, probably impossible; the example I've provided cheats by creating a sort of warp zone between Minnesota/Iowa and North/South Dakota. Still, I think it gets the job done by and large.
12.28.2008
Mapping the New Congress
@ 9:14 AM
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Dude, pretty sweet.
2nd!
Nate, I'd appreciate it if you'd put it up to a vote as to which one of these you will be using. If I did have a vote I can almost garuntee I'd vote heck no on this one. It is confusing to me. Can we see all the options and maybe one of the code savy guys or gals that read this website can come up with something as well?
This is cool. I would suggest that you could look at this website to get some ideas for representing what you have in mind. http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/visualizations
Couple of problems with Texas. There are two 14th Districts (Ron Paul-R) and no 22nd (now Olson-R as he defeated Lampson). I assume that one of those needs to be renumbered.
Also, the 23rd and 28th are both Democratic, held by Ciro Rodriguez and Henry Cuellar.
Dude, where's DC?
Oh, yeah.
Go NY 4th!
This visualization does a great job of showing the quantity of votes in the population centers, even though it can't be a perfect geographic picture. I like it.
Clever! It's like building the Millennium Falcon out of Legos.
And it also looks like a turkey.
I love it, but it should be accompanied by a "normal" national map so I can tell which district in in which state. I, for instance, want to know if I am looking at a district in IL or IN.
I vote fro two maps, one normal, and one "Nate cool."
If you draw a straight line on that schematic map from northern L.A. to NW Ohio, and then down to NE S.C, you'll get about as neat a geographical separation of blue and red America as you could hope for.
This is cool and useful. I like it. I doubt it can be improved very much with tweaking. Tufte would be proud.
The question I don't see answered is how you are going to layer votes onto this. Votes are tri-state, so if you want to preserve party (as I'm sure you do), then you could use lightness and saturation to indicate a vote. Maybe (L=medium, S=medium) for abstain, (L=high, S=high) for yea and (L=low, S=low) for nay.
Couldn't you do a traditional cartogram, like the ones that are bloated to show population, and then just map district borders to it?
Basically, the second map on this page:
http://politicalmaps.org/2004-presidential-election-maps/
But with district borders drawn in to the states and each district colored and numbered. I dunno'.
It should be the northwest corner of Oregon that sticks out, I think.
OPEN IT UP TO A COMPETITION!
I would like to see a map closser to an actual map. Maybe like a road map, you could separate out those cities (like NY, that would cause problems with the map, into their own little area. Just thinking....
Why am I having so much trouble posting a comment? My password keeps being rejected as incorrect.
I find it a bit confusing, but that could just be because I can't find Iowa. Although, that could just be because its hard to figure out without the Mississippi to guide me.
FYI: Maryland's first district was won by dem Frank Kratovil after a bruising primary where 18-year repub imcumbent Wayne Gilchrest lost to right-wing partisan Andy Harris. Gilchrest was one of two repubs who voted yes on a time-line to end the Iraq war. Harris was heavily funded by the Club for Growth and was endorsed by former repub governor Robert Ehrlich (a partisan of the worst stripe).
Many thanks to Gilchrest for subsequently campaigning for Kratovil. Gilchrest has a strong record on tryig to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, and Harris would have been a nightmare in this regard and countless others.
Former repub governor Robert Ehrlich has an interesting history of election fraud. During the 06 general election in his bid for re-election as governor of Maryland against dem Martin O'Malley, he recruited homeless people from Philadelphia to distribute literature in majority-black Prince George's county stating he was a democrat and was being endorsed by specific PG County political leaders. These recruits were paid, fed, and greeted by Ehrlich's wife upon their arrival by bus on election day. Alberto Gonzalez refused to investigate this as a case of election fraud.
From Pasadena, Maryland I thank all that Nate and his crew do and hope we all can use this site to better educate ourselves about politics.
It's abit difficult for me to figure out in some spots, but interesting. FYI, there are two FL-9 and no FL-23.
District number 10 is missing from California you only have 52 boxes and California has 53 Congressional seats. I do have to say that showing population density like this really emphasizes how much more populated California is than its neighbors.
-K
Very nice. I think it would be a slight improvement to attach the Dakotas to Minnesota and maybe spread out the other tiny states that are now attached to Colorado, though. By spread out, I mean that Idaho could be attached to Washington (because of the Inland Empire connection, which in this case refers to Spokane, and its economic satellites, not the Salton Sea. And Montana would go either with Idaho or with the Dakotas. Wyoming would stay with Colorado.
Mark Sullivan,s suggestion above, using a 'traditional' car4togram and drawing borders within it, is also worth considering, but I assume Nate rejected it because he wants square and therefore identically shaped districts.
Nate-
You guys could consider just using a normal map of the US and divide each state by congressional district. That way the cartogram bears at least some resemblance of the US proper rather than what a child's attempt at color by number might resemble. No offense. :-)
The electoral map at DailyKos:
http://scoreboard.dailykos.com/map/
is the best on the web - very powerful. Not sure what the proposed one adds.
Why not partner with them?
I would prefer states in the correct geographic location, even if it means lots of whitespace between states.
I usually ignore any map that greatly distorts the actual geography of an area to impart information. I don't like using a crutch of distortion to impart information that can be better expressed in a table of some sort.
There are 53 boxes for California, but two are listed as 26 and that's why there's no 10. The blue one to the right in row 5 (from the top) can be 10, but it might be better placed if it were moved left and up.
Your equal-area principle really does make a more realistic political map. Obviously, some tweaks would be possible. Maybe, e.g. putting all the numbered boxes inside state-shaped areas, each of whose total area would then be about proportional to population. There would then be lots of white spaces between states, but people would have some familiar visual guides.
And of course fix the many little mistakes. MO-08?
Confusing as hell to me, when it gets to the NE states. I understand the difficulties though. What about making it a HTML image map and addding the state abrieviations to the tooltip? At least that way we'll be able to identify the state in question by hovering the mouse pointer over the map.
Ugh, this comment section sounds like a middle school geography class, full of bitching and moaning and "Hi Nate!!!"
I like the map alright, but I agree that it is confusing. Basically in order for the map to be functional, I think you'd need to have some kind of pop-up overlay to state which state it is (which could include other information, like name, etc.). This would probably mean running Java or Flash applets, neither of which are likely to work in my feed reader. (For real, I can't decide if "First post!" is worse than the way most other blogs would do it, where the first post is a vicious flame from a resident troll. I think the trolling is probably less annoying.)
The people requesting a "normal" congressional map aren't thinking about the dense clusters of seats around our biggest cities. NYC is going to be an illegible smudge if you do it that way.
Having floating infoboxes seems like a necessity in any case, even though it breaks my feed. Tough choices need to be made...
I agree with DaveMcW... Put the Dakotas and Idaho and Montana floating in that whitespace between Minnesota and Washington, in their correct geographical locations.
I haven't seen this yet -- if someone knows of an example, I'd be be glad to hear of it -- but following up from 2004's "archipelago" meme, I would like to see a map of the US with the color scheme screened to match the population density. For example, if you have a large sparsely-populated state (Hm, AK comes to mind), it would not be same color as a smaller denser one that went for the same candidate. So Idaho might be more opaquely colored than Alaska, but the same color base. Hawaii would be darker blue that Alaska would be red (pink?).
The problem I have with a lot of these maps if they conflate land mass with voting representation. Two states that are the same size but have dissimilar populations are not equivalent, just as a small densely-populated state is more valuable, from an electoral standpoint, than a large empty one.
This is a little pernicious to my mind, as it reinforces the importance of OH, FL, NY, CA over other states, when the ideal is that every vote is equivalent. But that's what we have.
i look at this map and just see missing chunks of what i see as America.
why not scrap all together the U.S. map as we know it and do a chart? face it this almost a chart anyway
when i was in high school we had a test to fill in a blank U.S. map with states and capitols.
the somewhat nutty teacher forgot to take down the map that was always hanging in the corner. can't say i cheated;)
but i aced that test!
That is nice, although you can spur it a bit just to project their image some more ..
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http://13root.blogspot.com
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Love it! I assume later you would have some sort of color-coded system something like blue for democrats aligned with dem leaderships, red for republicans doing the same, and then various shades of purple etc for debates.
Would Love for you to do the same thing with the Senate, and then you wouldn't have to deal with making the states funky shapes!
I like the basic concept, but it definitely needs someway to answer the question, "What is that 3-district state in the part of the country where I never lived" (and thus didn't really learn the geography).
Filling the gap where I expect to find Montana and Idaho would probably also help.
I am liking just going with a chart after reading all these comments. More columns, and thus more info, can be imparted. You could keep this as the "Nate cool" map though.
Well, I think I found Idaho, but it's sitting on top of a state with only 1 vote. That can't be Utah, and I don't think it's Nevada, so I haven't a clue what it is. Also, you've missed the border of Idaho with Oregon and Washington.
Frankly, the entire mountain west is screwed up and largely inscrutable. I think you'll need to make some different compromises.
I'd suggest starting with a population based cartogram, and then put the botes in the appropriate states. You're just not going to be able to do it with stcked boxes.
Nice cartogram, Nate! It's as good an attempt as I've seen to try to represent congressional districts in a cartogram format.
Have you considered doing this as a completely discontinuous cartogram? That might help you improve readability in the Idaho-Dakotas region, where your current interruption lines make things a little hard to read.
Think about it this way: you could take the current state-by-state district layouts from this model (with some corrections - like that for Oregon - as suggested above in the comments), but center each one on the geographic centroid of its state on a line map of US state boundaries. That way, you'd make the map more readable.
You might need to play with the line map of US states a bit to get it to work (perhaps use some sort of cartogram-like solution to increase the relative size of New England and Delaware), but I suspect there's some sort of hybrid solution that would improve on your already-strong model.
-Jason Stiffler,
sometimes non-degree grad student in GIS
Portland State University
This is a pretty good visualization - it achieves the goals of 1. representing every vote by the same amount of area, and 2. giving some indication of where each vote lives. Right now the only problem is that I can't readily identify each state.
You could solve this problem simply and elegantly by adding one additional square to each state, coloring it black, and writing in white the standard two letter state abbreviation. You'd have to redraw all the states with one more square, but hopefully you can do that reasonably well.
I also support the idea of a contest to decide the map. You should probably judge it yourself rather than putting it to a vote, since many of the commenters don't seem to share your vision for the map.
Also, in the interest of speeding the process up, it would be good if you posted an SVG. If you're not using an SVG, somebody should make one. I might do this if I have time.
Let's ask ourselves the more topical question:
WHERE IS BRISTOL PALIN'S BABY?
Nine days after the due date and there's no child. Maybe there was something to that story after all.
Because each district is relatively small, the type is relatively large - leading to lots and lots of white. The whole thing has a very washed out look.
Could you try:
(1) finer type, or
(2) a larger map, or
(3) stronger red and blue?
(I am partial to 3)
Jonathan
I like it. Someone said it looked like a turkey. It does if the turkey is looking to the left......but when it's looking to the right, it looks like a dinosaur with his mouth open. Only Nate Cool could pull off something so intense!
@ 66gardeners
Why am I having so much trouble posting a comment? My password keeps being rejected as incorrect.
It happens to me also.Extremely irritating!
Maybe represent the states that have only one district using the state's abbreviation ("AK", "WY", "DE", etc.) instead of the number "1"? That could help to distinguish the states where the shapes are least useful for telling which state is which (which seems worst to me in the northern and central plains and northern Rockies).
There is something similar to this in my US history textbook on about the 2004 election (except it is the Presidential election). I figure you could probably set it up similar to make it easier to understand. Unfortunately, the scanner doesen't seem to be working right now so I took some crude pictures of it just to show you. Hope it helps (And works :P).
http://img155.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pict0326mu5.jpg
http://img91.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pict0327xh1.jpg
-Passerby25.
P.S. Like what your doing here, keep up the good work.
how about hovering the mouse over a state pops up a little flag w/ the state's name?
Here's a 2006 house map by the NY Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/elections/2006/House.html
Beau - how about hovering the mouse over a state pops up a little flag w/ the state's name?
I've got a better idea. Drag your mouse over a red district and pop it into the dinosaur's mouth and watch the dinosaur turn a deeper shade of blue. Try dragging a blue district and pop it into the dinosaur's mouth and he spits it back out.......Nate.....get to work on this!
s - ive been wondering where that baby is too. hummmmm....
although i hate to remind you that a child isnt a baby its a friggin MIRACLE!
sarah says so
thanks ronster- i would dearly love to see your version!
Ronster:
I, too, think Nate's cartogram looks like a dinosaur -- a pterodactyl, in fact, about to take off!
Btw, great subconscious metaphor, Nate: infuses the old, lethargic Congress with the power of flight to lift that bottom-heavy body to new heights. (I can even picture Obama straddling it as they soar across the sky...)
...and thanks, Venu, for that fascinating data presentation URL. The *democratization of visualization* -- there's a concept!
Dave McW's cite to the NYTimes 2004 map is the best. But if Nate wants to do it professionally, he should either use the NYTimes cartographer or Michael Gastner, who's a pro at cartograms. Look here: http://www.santafe.edu/~mgastner/
Too bad Nate doesn't read after the first 20 comments.
Haha, in real life geography Idaho borders six states and BC, but you only have two squares to work with Cong. Dist. cartography. Putting Wyoming to Idaho's south instead of the correct east is one mistake to correct.
@loner.. good eye. I recounted and came up with 53. By the way I do like the equal-area cartogram. I just needs some dialing and tweaking.
Putting GIS and Political Science together is a great thing.
Districts in states with only one district are usually designated "AL" (At-Large).
livemild -
Nice to see you recognize my work in other places. The Bristol baby mystery is getting better with each passing day. Here you will find a couple interesting posts under ronster -
http://www.bristolpalinpregnant.com/comments/index.php
Hope that's OK to share here.
I think you should keep the states in their correct respective places and not worry about them touching one another. Then they can retain their shape and position and the map becomes much more clear - just float them.
@Nate --
Put the boxes representing the districts on top of a cartogram where state sizes have been adjusted for population. The state shapes are distorted but still generally recognizable, and because the sizes are adjusted for population each state should be large enough to accommodate all its boxes.
Anyone else think maybe Israel is over-reacting and getting it one last uncontrolled, Cheney approved, shot before Obama takes over?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
Israel, I just don't get the gross over-reaction here and in the Lebanese debacle last year. I think they get 3-10 billion in aid, anyone else want their tax dollars back?
wv- glibly - as in Israli's glibly killing other people's kids and increasing the terror risk to Americans.
Exclusive photo of Bristol's baby!
http://snipurl.com/977r6
Forget Bristol's baby, people are dying:
http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2008/12/28/as-they-were-picking-up-the-dead-out-of-the-broken-glass-yes-its-number-one-the-radio-said-groovy-times-have-come-to-pass/#Respond
Does Bristol's second baby have Downs too?
Fred -
We're off-topic, but I agree 100%. Israel is taking advantage of the dead zone separating "(Very) Lame Duck" and "Captain America." Bad form.
'Heard the Israeli spokesperson on Meet the Press this morning opining that surely -- surely! -- the world will close ranks behind Israel against Hamas. I'm not so sure. They're acting too much like Bush from 2002. 'Turns out the world didn't like his moves, either.
P.S. Nate -- in case my post above was too hard to understand, here's what I meant -- it's only partially complete, but you get the idea.
Pssst
But that doesn't look like a dinosaur or a turkey......it looks more like a whale in horrible distress.
Very true, Ronster. The main drawback of this map is that it utterly fails to resemble either a dinosaur or a turkey. ;-)
actually the map looks like Bristol's mystery baby.
I'm having a really hard time telling the red and blue apart, due to pernicious red/blue colorblindness. Would it be possible to use a red/blue combo with a slightly higher contrast ratio, or different luminance values?
@Pssst -
Yeah - that looks right - it's akin to what I was suggesting, but corrects for the problem of larger states like CA and IL.
I wonder if it would be possible to create some sort of compromise map that generally worked on the principles of a population cartogram, but which artificially inflated the sizes of the mountain states for easier legibility. It wouldn't be too big a sacrifice in accuracy, since the background cartogram wouldn't be the real source of data on the map - it's just an aid to comprehension.
One could do it either by artificially inflating the population of a few states in the calculation of the cartogram - or just by being a cool artist....
Hey, just throwing this out there to ease confusion...
Would you consider overlaying each state's initials in a 50% transparent color or something of that nature (where we'd still be able to see the district numbers, of course). This could really help for those having trouble locating places on the map, especially the midwestern states.
I like it, but perhaps it could be tweaked a bit to make the areas more recognizable in a typical fashion. Perhaps a translucent typical map that would appear when you mouse-over an area?
Nerd math geeks rock!
I think I'm able to identify some/most of the states there. But, the shapes and locations of everything make it very hard to be sure.
What's wrong with doing basically what you're doing here...but having the colored blocks be enclosed in the outline of the respective state?
@STepper
Gastner's work is interesting, but I don't see how it relates at all to the problem Nate is trying to solve. The task Nate chose for himself was "represent [votes in] the new Congress geographically" He was not trying to make an equal-area representation of the US electorate. For obvious reasons, it happens that a cartogram of congressional districts is similar to typical cartograms of the electorate. (Never identical, of course, since congressional districts are not based on the electorate.) But a map like those made by Gastner and his collaborators at U Mich does not address the problem Nate is trying to solve.
Similarly, other posts complaining that the cartogram is not a table strike me as also probably beside the point, although I'm happy to be persuaded otherwise. If you are uninterested in a geographical perspective on congressional votes, then a cartogram is naturally of no interest and a table is more useful. But for those of us who *are* interested in a geographical perspective, a single table useful for this purpose strikes me as a very hard thing to construct. If any of the posters who stated they preferred a table are actually interested in the geographical aspect of congressional votes, perhaps you could take a stab at proposing a table format. A serviceable table format could well be one of the very large number of practical things that lie beyond my powers of imagination. If so, I'd like to hear about it.
I'd be fine with the Mountain states just floating in position
I think you have two Florida 9ths - a red one and a blue one
Nate,
Try using hexagons.
Much easier to work with.
cf. Avalon Hill board games.
,dave
WV= tstrat = test rat (aren't we all?)
New England, with fewer than half the total residents of California, brings in as large a net gain of representatives (15) for dems as does the largest state in the union(15). New England's power is waining in this country, but as long as it remains as solidly blue as it is now, it remains relevant. Mass. in particular brings in a net of 10 seats (though not for long). Only California (15d), New York (23d) and Texas (12r) bring in more for their side.
I'm surprised no one else has picked up the one real geographical error in this map. You've got Nebraska south of Kansas instead of north of it.
Ooops, my bad. I was mistaking Nancy Boyda's district for the one Dem electoral district in Nebraska.
Michael-
regarding New England's power -- 12 Senate seats.
like you said, half the population of cali, but 6 times the representation in the senate.
Within New Jersey, the numbering of the blocks seems to have nearly nothing to do with the position of districts geographically. Is it supposed to?
Eirc Nilsson - The cartograms retain some of the shape of each state and also increase in size proportionate to the number of electors or Congressional districts. So, that was the problem I was trying to deal with. Nate's Pterodactyl doesn't quite do it for me.
On the other hand, the NYTimes 2006 Congressional map is close to an ideal solution, except for some border issues.
waiting for the senate version where the representation of the 2 seats in HI will be the same size as AK & New England will explode...
Nate--great work!
I have only one suggestion, and that would be to add a mouseover function, i.e. when you roll the mouse over a state its name pops up.
That would be an easy way to minimize the effect of the distortions.
Also, completely off topic though--what is the possibility of Washington DC becoming a state (i.e. with two senators and an actual representative) with the current makeup of the government? It would seem to be a wise political move for the Democrats, to add two more Senators that would almost certainly be from their party in perpetuity.
Pragmatus,
Regarding representation for DC - guaranteed filibuster (remember that sticky 60-vote problem?), then years of court challenges. The argument would be that DC is not a state as required in the Constitution.
Then the proposed 'compromise' would be for DC (outside a small core area bordering the National Mall and the Federal Triangle) to be retroceded to Maryland, similar to the retroceding of Arlington County to Virginia in 1846.
Trouble with that is:
1. Maryland wouldn't accept DC back without a lot of other concessions;
2. The residents of DC wouldn't accept the retroceding without a lot of other concessions, most of which would most likely not be acceptable to Maryland.
3. The retroceding would gain one House seat for Maryland (most likely for the Dems too), but which state would then lose a House district? It also would not make any difference in the Senate, since Maryland already has the requisite two Senators.
DC getting 2 Senators and House representation?
Mike covers it well.
Full representation in the House might be doable however. After a very long battle.
You should use some 2x2 or 3x3 blocks creatively to make the map fill in to look like the geographic map.
Something must be done with DC. There is a giant equal protection issue going here.
You should label the first district in each state with the state abbreviation rather than a "1".
Yuck. I don't like this map at all. I think I'd rather see a pie chart: Center the pie on the nation, and assign wedges so at least the compass direction is approximately right. Texas south, CA west, NY northeast, etc.
Or assign wedge sections; so the northeast has a larger but multi-colored wedge.
This map is confusing and not close enough to the actual map. I actually DON'T think Tufte would be proud; he would be proud if you could find a way to use the actual map and still convey the information you want to convey.
Perhaps a three dimensional rendering of the congressional districts as viewed from above?
It's too much of a compromise.
Maybe you could use regular state and district outlines, but label each district with a centered district number box? That might emphasize that the Representative is making decisions for that geographic area, whatever that is, but the equal size of the number boxes represents that each district has roughly the same population.
The nice thing about giving some separation (on the map) between the numbered boxes is that then you can draw alliance lines, and start showing how these congress critters are networking with each other and with influencers (the People, Big Business, Foreign powers, et cetera).
It's like Facebook, in reverse. The point is to reverse engineer what they're doing, since they won't give us the real fn manual.
- Oliver
As a Maryland resident I don`t see any way that the state would take on the dc residents.
The only way that could happen is DC would still be a self governing city but would be part of MD only for voting.
If this happened the republican party would no longer need to exist in MD since it would be impossible to ever win a statewide office again.
The new congress could easily pass a bill giving dc a house vote and adding a seat in some republican state. Probably not constitutional but that`s an issue for the future.
@JOH: (Oliver) Good point. I think what we are really interested in is not so much the vote, but how our representative voted and why.
So here is a prediction project Nate might sink his teeth into: A map of the C.D. not based so much on votes, but on how contrary the votes are to prediction. A map of the "surprise" factor. I think for each of the congressional districts, we can figure out how well its vote on a bill is predicted by all the other CD votes, and then collect the best predictors for that CD vote.
For example, TX-9 might be most positively influenced by TX-20, TX-18, and most negatively influenced by TX-7 (i.e. almost always votes opposite of TX-7). Such a number tells us the usual alliances and enemies of TX-9, and what we are really interested in is when TX-9 fails to vote as predicted: A surprise.
That in turn tells us where the story is on any given vote, and perhaps gives us fodder for political action, to either agitate for a surprise, or agitate against a surprise.
Of course alliances and enemies do not have to be immediate neighbors. That may seem likely, but the congressman from TX-9 might be heavily influenced by a congressman from across the country that happens to head a committee TX-9 serves on.
A little statistical inference can reveal such relationships, and at least to me, I am more interested in the relationship and horse-trading that is going on than in any particular vote. The bill passes or it doesn't and in some sense becomes water under the bridge. Either way the important thing to know is why, so we can influence the future, repeat our successes and prevent future failures.
You guys could consider just using a normal map of the US and divide each state by congressional district. That way the cartogram bears at least some resemblance of the US proper rather than what a child's attempt at color by number might resemble. No offense. :-)
Gaahhh... no offense :-), but this really looks like you're missing the entire point of the exercise, which is an attempt to show congressional representation with an equal area given to each representative.
I live in a district (CA-27) that covers only 152 square miles, and because we have about the same population as the state of Alaska, we have one representative in the House, just like Alaska does. A "normal" map would show Alaska about 4,000 times bigger than my district, because Alaska covers about 4,000 times as much territory. This would completely distort its representation compared to my district.
I don't think this cartogram is without ways it could be improved, but your suggestion completely misses the point.
Adam-
maybe the to solve that and make it readable is to just float each state in space, in population size, in its location on the map. Solves both problems.
It kinda looks like a banana with wings. However, form follows function, and your format allows quick red vs. blue comparisons by voting strength, which is more important than reflecting geometric area.
@FRED: I agree, and I'd go further: Just a square with a number, all square or circles the same size, centered on the congressional district it represents. connect the object by lines to the congressional districts it borders. That conveys all of the information. If wanted, you could put a faded outline of the USA behind the map as a clue.
I would put in the square the two-letter postal abbreviation of the state as well; e.g. TX-9.
@Thomas said You should label the first district in each state with the state abbreviation rather than a "1".
That's a very interesting idea. It solves several problems.
I think the NY Times has a better compromise in this map. They've distorted the shape of some states more than you, but it has allowed them to maintain more geographic clarity. *shrug*
Using more blocks per district can help, as well as exploding urban centers outside of their normal boundaries.
See e.g. this effort for the UK, which also features hover-over constituency names (in IE, not Firefox annoyingly):
http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/index.html?dynamicmap.html
Hi Nate,
I tried to post this yesterday - sorry if it is a duplicate.
Personally, I found the map to be quite intuitive and easy to understand, even without the explanation below it.
Here is a suggestion for arranging the districts within my own state of Georgia so that their location within the map more or less matches their location in real life:
(1st row) 9 10
(next row) 11 6 4 7
(next row) 3 13 5 12
(last row) 2 8 1
Or, alternatively, the first two rows could be:
11 9
6 4 7 10
I think the two options have approximately equivalent inaccuracies; the first one does at least get all the corners right.
That map looks like the democratic donkey...
The fact that Alaska has only one lonely vote (red or otherwise) is oddly comforting.
If you like it fine, there is no easy way, so since its your site Id say go for it. You havent got anything wrong (except for CK) yet!
While overall it works pretty well, the mountain west fails pretty badly on readability. I'd definitely shift those states around in the white space to move them closer to their relative geographical centers. At the very least move MT, ID and ND up to fill in the top edge and leave the hole in the middle rather than making a large bay of it. I also like the idea of adding a state abbreviation square to each state. Or just turn every district 1 into the state abbreviation.
I'll second mglutton above that the Daily Kos map is close to an ideal representation (though even there I notice it's difficult to figure out, for example, where the NYC boroughs lie).
But if I understand Nate's post, the goal here is to come up with something that is:
a) relatively economical in pixels and bandwidth, and
b) functional in the same way the the Electoral College maps were (i.e. automatically updatable by a spreadsheet or database).
To that end, I think Nate's rough idea could be useful with tweaks. Obviously the mountain/prairie West is totally illegible right now; Assuming this is plotted on a rectangular grid, it shouldn't be hard to move ND, SD, MT WY and ID closer to their actual locations in that giant whitespace.
In general, I think it would be good to "explode" the map a bit more to make the state borders a little easier to see.
And one minor tweak: MA should either be rectangular, or "wrapped" south around RI rather than north around NH (it's CD's 4 & 10 that are east of RI). If I'm seeing this right, you could then move ME "south" a square and save a whole row at the top.
The problem with the Daily Kos map is that it goes by area. Take a look at Southern California or the New York area... how many Congressional districts are there there? Are they Democratic or Republican? You can't tell; they're too crowded together.
I do like the suggestion above about showing a regular map, but then having a nice graphical element like a colored circle represent each district. Any reasonably-sized circle will be too big to fit into the biggest metro areas without crowding, but there should be a way to fit them onto the map somehow without distorting the size.
It's doubtful how many will expend the energy to get to this low spot on this thread but here goes:
Many of the corrective suggestions provided (while notably valid) don't proscribe completely to the Nate's stated requirements.
I'm perceiving that an unstated requirement of Nate's is that he's looking for a solution whereby the generation of the map is Excel-based. The groupies of the site will recall Nate's self-comparison to McGayver when it comes to Excel and how he produced his maps during the election season.
Successfully creating state (and DC) outlines to be roughly total population proportional and simutaneously representing inter-state population densities using the same scale all the while being Excel producable is bound to hit some limits. (Insert homage to Abraham Lincoln's "all the people all of the time" here.)
Nate:
1) Fix the boo-boos,
2) Close the clarity gap with state labels as necessary (perhaps all the "At Large" states is sufficient), and
3) Let her rip.
I'm looking forward to your graphic representations of congressional activity along with the erudite narratives that will accompany them.
P.S.
I know I'd find myself experimenting with some non-white borders between states to make it look less like USA "air hockey" but the ROI goes to zero quickly in these situations.
why even bother with this style?
create a map that has all the state rendered as their shape. then, as people hover over the state a table showing all this information could appear.
of course, you east coasters probably won't like that, but that's your fault for creating small states in the past. go to war and claim some of the larger states as your own. of course, that negates the united states concept, but at least you'll have a larger chunk of the pie, right?
/that's sarcasm, people.
If you do use this map style, I would at least like there to be a clearer delineation of states. Just some sort of solid line between the states, rather than just a gap, would make it much easier to determine which district is where.
i am also currently working on a map showing the congressional districts. . .i recently made this map of the 2008 electoral college. . http://redorangeorangeonred.com/portfolio/current/the%20college.html
i will share mine soon once its complete. . and looking forward to seeing what you come up with. . .
An alternate black-and-white version would be useful for the colorblind. Suggestion--use one of the pinstripe backgrounds in Excel, vertical for Democrats and horizontal for Republicans (these match the conventions in heraldry for drawing red and blue). This also works for the Senate map, I think.
I second the idea of indicating every state in its first district box, but suggest also including the number (eg TN1 for Tennessee's 1st), or a star (WY*) for at-large seats.
On the question of who loses a seat if you add DC: under most current estimates, in 2010, it will be South Carolina. (On the 2000 census, it's North Carolina, and on the 1990, it was Washington state.)
66gardeners said...
FYI: Maryland's first district was won by dem Frank Kratovil after a bruising primary where 18-year repub imcumbent Wayne Gilchrest lost to right-wing partisan Andy Harris
Dude, you're looking at DE's seat. Took me a second, too.
Nate has MD-01 with the rest of MD that's blue, except for Bartlett's 6th CD.
I'm going to repeat another person's previous comment:
Try hexagons or octagons... you'll be able to better maintain the shape of each state and the relative position of districts.
I stand by my previous comment of overlaying a 40% transparency (or thereabouts) abbreviation for each state in yellow.
Cartograms look pretty cool because those tiny urban districts get the same size as the giant rural districts... makes the country look more blue. A cartogram should always be a "secondary" view, though, because they otherwise look to darn weird.
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