Out come the interactive maps, election 2008 style
Now that the Democratic nomination has come to a close with Tuesday’s final primaries and news that Hillary Clinton will (finally!) concede to Barack Obama on Saturday, the general election interactive maps pitting Obama against Republican nominee John McCain are popping out all over the place.
Some sites, like Election Projection, keep it pretty simple. However, clicking each state takes you to a drilldown page with details and statistics specific to each state. For example, we learn about Colorado: “Colorado is the 27th most conservative state, voting 2.2% more Republican in the 2004 presidential elections than the national average.”
The Election 2008 site, featuring “Presidential, Senate and House Races Updated Daily” does an excellent job of displaying number of electoral votes, which way the state is leaning (Weak GOP, Strong Dem, and so on), current polling information by state, and historical results by state dating back to the 1992 presidential election.
I’m a sucker for these kinds of stats. For example, I love being able to analyze a state like Kentucky, where we see that Bill Clinton won the state by four points in 1992, squeaked by Dole in the state by just one point in 1996, but then the state turned bright red with strong victories by George W. Bush over both Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004.
FiveThirtyEight.com throws a kitchen sink’s worth of maps, stats, and charts into the mix. Compare Obama vs. McCain against Clinton vs. McCain cartograms, for instance, to look at the relative strengths of candidates in states while getting a visual on how many electoral votes states possess.
It would be nice if some of these maps were embeddable, so that people could post them wherever they liked. It’s possible that some sites are doing this, but I’ve yet to come across an example.
This year’s presidential election will see a new level of involvement and innovation on the web, and things are just kicking into high gear. Any thoughts on new things that we’ll see on the web this election cycle? Please comment away!
