The Trouble With Election Maps

Add another division to America’s election-induced headaches: maps.

Of course, we’re all familiar with the quadrennial song-and-dance of the CNN-style Red States, Blue States electoral college map trotted out for pundits to read the proverbial tea leaves. But even more “sophisticated” maps, such as the one that got a four-page spread in The New York Times today, raised eyebrows out there in the cartography-enthusiast community among those know all too well the need for map literacy.

There are upshots and drawbacks to any method, whether it’s color-coded states, percent-shaded precincts, or density-contorted cartograms. Conveying over one hundred million people voting across almost four million square miles of a country requires some blunt tool to simplify the data, especially in print. Imagine if The New York Times had printed this monstrosity.