How to Spot Misleading Election Maps
Election results often produce confusing cartography. Here’s how leading cartographers and data journalists approach the challenge of making (and reading) political graphics.
Seeing a lot of red on election night 2016 in New York City.
Photographer: EDUARDO MUNOZ ALVAREZ/AFPIn October 2019, in the lead-up to his impeachment trial, President Donald Trump tweeted a map of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, with results shown at the county level using the standard partisan color convention. The map — a sea of red, with the words “Try to impeach this” — generated an uproar, because it was highly misleading: The rural counties that supported Trump represent a lot of land mass, but don’t have nearly as many people as the urban ones that voted for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Their numbers were concentrated, just as most of the support for this year’s Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, is likely to be.
That infamous lesson in misleading maps is worth revisiting, because newscasts, websites and social media are likely to be full of similar-looking ones after the Nov. 3 election. Choropleth maps — or maps that use color, shading or patterns to show quantitative differences — are some of the most common ways to visualize how counties as well as states are voting, even though they rarely come with the important disclaimer that land doesn’t vote. In a year where uncertainty is the only certainty, a critical eye towards election-related graphics will serve truth-seeking readers well — as will a look at how other kinds of voting maps are underpinning the election in critical parts of the U.S.