Brad DeLong offers a “real” map of the 2000 presidential election showing that we’re not as divided as advertised because Bush and Gore both got votes virtually everywhere.
While this is true in one sense, it overstates our unity even more than the simple map based on the Electoral College vote overstates our division. The more accurate depiction is the county-by-county map shown here:
We had a very close election in which Al Gore got quite a few more votes than George Bush. But there is a legitimate rural-urban cultural divide that the map illustrates. This superb David Brooks article in the December 2001 Atlantic Monthly gives an excellent analysis of that divide.
(Hat tip: Ogged)
Update (1254): This rather gigantic county-by-county map is something of a compromise between “my” map and Brad’s: It differentiates between close counts and runaways.
Update (1621): Ogged adds a link the “the best map so far” to his post. It’s a good one, I must admit. Indeed, it combines the purple quality of Brad’s map with the geographical qualities I was pointing to quite nicely.
Update (1228 7-30): Quinn has yet another variant of the map, which varies the colors based on population density rather than voting strength.
