On Election Day, the Democratic Party regained the 17th and 24th districts previously held by Republicans, while the Republican Party regained the 27th district previously held by a Democrat. Gary Ackerman and Democratic Maurice Hinchey, as well as freshman Republican Bob Turner, did not seek re-election to the House of Representatives. Bob Turner, and District 22, held by retiring Democratic Rep. The two existing districts that were eliminated were District 9, held by Republican Rep. Seven days out from the election is not the time to be playing with people's inherent perceptual and cognitive bias.Main article: United States House of Representatives elections in New York, 2012Īfter a loss of two seats following the 2010 United States Census, the New York congressional delegation was reduced from twenty-nine to twenty-seven U.S. That's a very nuanced way to explore the distribution of voting and I'd still argue that most who read the map will take away one message.more red = more Republican. They try and frame the big map as an attempt to look at the way physical geography impacts political patterns. A rebuttal of the criticism they've faced? Maybe. UPDATE 2: And now a good review of past approaches from NYT here. It retains a State-based appearance (which isn't as difficult to read as the population equalising versions) while doing a good job of presenting a visually balanced view of the data. They've been advocating cartograms based on one area per electoral college vote which I like. UPDATE: Since writing this less than an hour ago the Washington Post has published a very well-timed piece entitled Election maps are telling you big lies about small things. Whatever the map says to you.just go and vote and help redraw the one you want. You only have to look at what happened in the UK a few months ago where the vote was to leave Europe.a vote massively impacted because many people failed to turn out to vote who would otherwise have voted not to leave. Please.do yourselves a favour and go vote. It's also too late because it's out there now and is simply just another piece of rhetoric people can use to support their own version of the facts.īy the way, I don't get to vote in the US election but I have lived and worked in the US for 5 years and call it home. It presents a version of the truth that suits a particular view of reality. The NYT have, in my opinion, contributed to the misinformation that has enveloped this election by publishing this map in the form they chose. My point here, is that maps can be extremely dangerous graphic tools. It's an important issue because it plays to people's views, opinions and search for the truth. None are 'right' and none are 'wrong' but they all tell different versions of the truth. Ultimately, there are dozens of different ways that the map can be made. More than that - they have no idea they might even benefit from it or that there's a problem with how they read the maps they are served. The vast majority have no access to this sort of education. But they are merely a small fraction of the population. I guess it's to be expected - not every geo-expert is going to be a cartographic expert and they come to the session to learn and that's a great thing. What surprises me year on year is that an audience of people heavily invested in geo are equally surprised at the problems we explore. The point of the session is to open people's eyes to the inherent biases that maps contain. You can see the full range of maps here if you're interested. Some of the maps can clearly be used to portray a particular dimension of the result and some can be used in deplorable ways (pun intended). For the last few years in my day job I've given a workshop at the Esri International User Conference that takes a single dataset of the 2012 election results and explores a range of about 20 different ways to present the very same data - each of which tells a very different story.
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