Chris Curtis dot Org

But is it a “mandate” from the masses?  The bottom line is that neither candidate had overwhelming support.  Is there really a winner between two losers?  You’ll need this map in order to follow the rest of this post.

There are weighted maps that scale the size of states to the Electoral Votes, but I think the story the media are largely leaving behind is how even though Bush has likely won (at the time of posting, Ohio is still “too close to call"), I don’t think either one of them “won”.  If anything, this country has just shown how there are two completely different social groups formed in this large landmass.  The Daily Show joked last night about the next Civil War, and frankly that’s not too far from truth.

Ok, the map.  A preface, that unlike pundits, when I did the data and whatnot, I had no intention of what I wanted to show, but just wanted to see what it would look like.  The top part of the map is the map that you’ll see on TV and various news sites.  Bright red for states that Bush won the Electoral College votes, and bright blue for Kerry.  But did this map reflect the “will of the people”?  The popular vote numbers certainly didn’t show that, so I thought: what if the colors on the states actually represented the popular vote?

The method is simple.  Pixels on screen are represented by (R)ed, (G)reen, and (B)lue, with values ranging from 0-255.  Based on each state’s percentage of the popular vote for either candidate, I determined the RGB value for the state.  For instance, Utah has an RGB value of (181,0,69), 71% for Bush, 27% for Kerry.  The result?  A purple map of the US, with spots like Utah glaringly red, and Washington D.C. intensely blue.  All in all, though, the states are purple, with a near 50/50 split overall.  This map certainly doesn’t show a “clear mandate” for either candidate.

When looking at the numbers, and thinking about electoral votes, many places use a weighted map, which distorts the size of the states in accordance with how many electoral votes they get, which looks something like this.  That map doesn’t mean much to me, though, because it looks so foreign.  Enter the map on the bottom.  Using a curve, with California setting the stage with over 9 million votes, I added transparency to the map, to show how much each state contributed to the popular vote.  PC users may want to adjust their gamma to even see the western half of the country.

No “sea of red” and even the states that Kerry carried electoral votes are blatantly purple.  Can either candidate feel good knowing that half of the people don’t support them?  Half.  Half of the country would be ticked off regardless of who won.  Half of the country will not see an adminstration representing their ideals for the next four years.  Sounds dumb to me, and I’m glad I don’t involve myself.

Some interesting things I came across while pouring through all the stats and maps in order to create these:

• Texas, of course, went to Bush.  But nearly all of the counties on the Mexican border went to Kerry.  Arizona was the same situation.  Why did such staunch Republican states go for the other candidate to people who’s decision was influenced by living on a border?
• New York went to Kerry, despite Bush (and Giuliani) portraying themselves as the great protectors against terrorism.  If that were true, wouldn’t New Yorkers feel safer with current administration?
• Democrats were thrilled at voter turnouts, thinking that higher turnouts would be a win for Kerry.  Obviously, with the popular vote going in a 3% favor to Bush, the more people that turned up, voted for Bush.  Kerry and co. clearly were wrong in thinking that their values were more in line with the country than the current administration.
• Florida.  In 2000, Democrats basically cried that they only lost because minority voters were disenfranchised.  Kerry carried a few counties, but it looks like Florida wasn’t so far off in 2000.  In fact, even with the increase in tallied minority and Democrat voters in Florida, Bush still had a net gain of some 150,000 voters.
• 11 states had gay marriage bans on their ballots.  All 11 overwhelming banned it.  All 11 states were won by Bush.  All 11 states had record Republican voter turnout.  Depending on your own ideals, Carl Rove thus either deserves a medal, or imprisonment.
• Washington D.C. had the strongest support of any district for Kerry.  90% to 10%, to be precise.  The people in D.C. have lived in a city with both of the candidates for the last four years, and probably know more about them than anyone else, particularly Idaho.
• This is the first election since 1988 that the winner also won the popular vote (presuming that Bush wins Ohio like their saying on television at present.  Why is there still an Electoral College?  Or should the U.S. just finally admit that it’s not the example of democracy that it claims (coming in eighth in the world, behind the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, Portugal, Australia, and New Zealand)?

Posted Wednesday November 3, 2004 in News by Derek Jones

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