MAPS AND CARTOGRAMS OF THE 2004 US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION RESULTS

Conventional maps of election results can give a misleading picture of the popular support that candidates have because population is highly non-uniform and equal areas on a map may not correspond to equal numbers of voters. Taking the example of the 2004 United States presidential election, we show how this problem can be corrected using a cartogram — a map in which the sizes of regions such as states are rescaled according to population or some other variable of interest.