Electoral Decoder: An interactive timeline that showcases the US presidential elections of the past and present
This brainchild I had a few months ago about how we could represent the electoral college (inspired very much by this Vox video) and how we could present it throughout history and up to today is very much alive! It’s still sort of in beta, but I am proud of it and you should take a look!
Why its cool: It has a map of every election ever and how each state voted. That means it shows you how many states were actually states at the time, and geographic political trends over time! However, it also shows you a CARTOGRAM.
Woah, a cartogram, that is a really harsh technical sounding word that might mean math. No one wants math in their history right?
Well, integration of subjects is important, so yes, we do want math in our history. But a cartogram is merely a visual depiction of statistical data.
Wat?
A cartogram is one of those funny shaped maps where the sizes of the places are related to a number that is important, not geographic size. These cartograms show the size of a state based on its electoral votes, meaning it shows you how important each state is to an election. Need to explain why Ohio is important in elections but Montana isn’t? This is the tool for you. Some cartograms are really funny and show states as super goopy approximations of their same geographic shape, but we opted for squares. I like squares, they are pretty but also a little easier to compare when thinking about funny shaped states like New York or Idaho or ehem…Florida.
Okay history is cool but what about like, today’s election?
So there are about a billion resources for today’s election, showing you the political polls as up to the second as possible. My personal favorite is the 538 Election Forecast. But what if you wanted to figure out just how many states Trump could win and still lose the election? What if you wanted to click every single state blue for Hillary just so that you can sleep sweetly tonight? What if you need to know just how few states Jill Stein needs to win to win an election? What if you just like clicking things that show up different colors to better grasp the current political climate of our times?
Well?
We also have a tool called the Presidential Predictor, and it is pretty great because you get to predict the future. Do it map style and scare yourself silly looking at all those states your opponent has (and this is the internet, so we even provided you a third party selection with NO physical, political, or ideological traits whatsoever so you do not have to back anybody if that is your personal flavor this 2016), and then click on the cartogram button to see how many electoral votes that really means. Enjoy flipping back and forth. Explore the possibilities. Have fun with politics.
Meh 2016 is exhausting me. What about if I just want to learn more about history and stuff?
Perf we have you covered. Each historical election has a little overview, some key election issues, and links to PBS materials that will give you further context so that you can get your historical learning on fleek.
No one says on fleek anymore do they? I mean I feel like it just appeared and immediately died within a week
idk man, maybe talk to a linguist about that. Anyways, cool thing I did (and stressed over, and pulled my hair out over, and struggled to perfect working late summer days), and I wanted to share.
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