An Extremely Misleading Election Map
Yesterday the New York Times published an interactive map of the 2016 presidential election which succeeded inward annoying a lot of cartographers. The NYT's Extremely Detailed Map of the 2016 Election allows you lot to explore the 2016 presidential election at the voting precinct level.
The map is a swell tool for exploring how many votes were cast for each presidential candidate at precinct level. It also allows you lot to run into at a glance which precincts overwhelmingly voted for either candidate. It does this past times shading each precinct past times the per centum of votes cast for the winning candidate. The darker a precinct is colored reddish on the map therefore the higher the per centum of votes cast for Donald Trump. The darker a shade of bluish therefore the higher the per centum of votes cast for Hillary Clinton.
It is this selection to shade precincts past times the per centum of votes cast for a candidate that has upset a lot of people. The argue why many people are argument that the NYT map is misleading is because it places also much visual weight on the large rural precincts won past times Donald Trump too distorts the overall number of the election. For event Jon Schleuss of the LA Times posted this straight comparing of the NYT election map amongst the LA Times Election map -
Both are maps of the same precinct degree data. However the LA Times map shades the precincts past times the number of people who alive at that spot rather than past times the per centum of votes cast for the winning candidate.Therefore inward the LA Times precinct election map to a greater extent than visual weight is given to precincts amongst the most voters rather than to the most partisan precincts. The number is a much to a greater extent than accurate map of the number of votes cast for each candidate inward California.
If you lot desire a detailed explanation of the problems amongst the NYT election map therefore you lot should banking corporation gibe out Kenneth Field's Cartographic Hyperbole post service of the map. Kenneth Filed's considered thoughts on election maps also characteristic prominently inward the Wired's Is the USA Leaning Red or Blue? It All Depends on Your Map. The Wired article looks closely at how the dissimilar cartographic too information visualization choices you lot brand tin greatly influence the story your maps tell. The article is illustrated amongst a number of dissimilar maps of the 2016 presidential election visualizing the information inward a number of dissimilar ways.
The upshot of all this criticism is non that the NYT election map is wrong. It is simply that the visualization choices made convey resulted inward a map which could easily mislead users nigh the degree of back upward for the winning candidate inward the 2016 presidential election.