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.