![]() US Presidential Election 202, Results by state Therefore only minor changes in this overall picture provided here are to be expected (putting possible legal challenges to these outcomes aside). At the time of writing (Nov 16, 2020) no final results were fully declared, although most states had completed counting between 95 and 100 per cent of the votes. The different visualizations show how using different base-maps can result in changing narratives for election outcomes. The following map series shows three different cartographic perspectives of the election outcome at state level: Shown here are one conventional map and two variations of cartogram depictions that demonstrate how the change in perspective provides unique new insights. However, while the county-level picture shows the most detailed picture of the political landscapes of the country, the actual results that matter for the outcome are those at state-level (which also led to Hillary Clinton losing the 2016 election despite having won the popular vote at the time). Trump’s vote share was highest in the rural areas, while his former strong showing in some urban areas and especially suburban belts around the cities that he could win over in the 2016 election largely vanished. Almost all large urban centres, including quite a few in the mid-west, show a majority of votes for Biden. The comparison of the electoral outcome in a normal map and an equal-population projection shows, how Biden’s vote dominates the spatial distribution of the votes in the most densely populated areas that stand out in the cartogram. US Presidential Election 2020, Results By County This can be achieved in manifold ways, as the wide range of visualisations during this election demonstrated. The most commonly used cartograms usually show a proportional representation of population distributions. In contrast, dense urban areas with an often significantly different demographic are obstructed from these maps, therefore providing misleading representations of an election outcome.Ī different way of showing elections is the use of so-called cartograms where areas are transformed by certain (often social) indicators. This usually leads to sparsely populated rural areas being over-represented. For election outcomes this means that they show vote shares plotted onto the distribution of land area. ![]() After his election victory he distributed conventional maps of the results to journalists in order to demonstrate his presumable landslide win across the country.Ĭonventional mapping techniques show data from a geographical perspective. In the context of US elections, it was the incumbent president himself who demonstrated such a lack of map reading skills in the aftermath of the 2016 election. This helped making wider audiences aware of the caveats that conventional mapping methods have in visualizing election outcomes. As the wait went on, the different types of visual representations themselves also became part of discussions, especially in social media. The long wait for confirmed (or at least relatively certain) outcomes from the different states helped to put these visualizations in the spotlight. Never had there been such a large diversity of – often interactive – mappings while the results came in. Some of the most prominent news organizations excelled in their visualization capabilities compared to previous elections, with cartographic representations often being a central part of this effort. It also was a competition of the media for catching the attention of larger audiences. The 2020 US presidential election did not only see a competition of two political opponents.
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