Election Maps Can Be Misleading—Here's a Solution

It’s hard to look at the news this year without seeing a red and blue map of the United States. These maps are a national obsession, and they have a long history, but they’re also deeply flawed.

You can see why in the map below, which shows the results from the 2012 election. The vast sea of red in the middle of the country might lead you to believe Mitt Romney won. But land masses don’t decide elections, the electoral college does. Montana may be big, but it has fewer electoral votes than tiny Rhode Island.

Cartographers have been experimenting with ways to better illustrate election results and polling data. One representation that seems to be getting traction this election is the cartogram, which distorts the shapes of the states so their size corresponds to the number of electoral votes they have. In the cartogram version of the 2012 election map below, you can see more clearly how coastal states and states in the upper Midwest carried the election for Obama.

The advantages of the cartogram have led some media outlets to include them in their coverage of this year’s election. Both the Washington Post and FiveThirtyEight developed cartograms this year to represent presidential polling data.

Cartograms have drawbacks, though. They mess with geography and make the states look strangely bloated, blocky, or pixelated, depending on the method used. Some people think they’re downright ugly. And for most people they’re not as familiar and intuitive to read as an old-fashioned map. At least not yet.

That’s why the Post lets readers toggle between the cartogram and a traditional map, says deputy graphics editor Chiqui Esteban. Despite their advantages, cartograms probably won’t be a fixture of mainstream media coverage on the eve of the election this year, Esteban says: “Election night is such a big deal, you don’t want to break so much from tradition.”

In cartography, as in politics, change can be slow to come.

original website: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/10/improved-election-map-cartograms/

obsession 摆脱不了的思想，妄想
flawed 有缺点的
electoral 选举的，选举人的
cartographer 制图者
poll 舆论调查，投票数
traction 牵引力
cartogram 统计地图
distort 扭曲，曲解
coverage 报道范围，放送范围
drawback 缺点
mess with 干涉，扰乱
bloated 膨胀的，过大的
blocky 斑驳的
pixelated 像素化的
downright 彻底的，直率的
intuitive 直观的，直觉的
toggle 切换；棒形纽扣
deputy 代理
fixture 固定装置