Do I Have to Draw You a Map

MapsSetting aside this awful feeling for a moment: here are a few of my favorite electoral maps — from an information design perspective, not from an electoral math perspective — from this Election Day just past. It’s mildly interesting how the various news outlets and independent sources each tackled the challenge of visually assessing how the country voted. I say “mildly” because as a design problem, the electoral college is almost banal in its limitations. There are only so many ways you can show this data.

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Game, Set, Match

Not many of my friends seems to want to talk about the Kerry/Edwards loss in any great detail, and it makes me wonder if I’m the only one taking it as hard as I am. To be honest, I’m devastated, and furious and overcome with melancholy, and I’m not sure what to do with myself. It fills me with dread to consider what George W. Bush will do with a second term; I get physically ill when I consider the long-term damage that might be done by forty-eight more months of his diplomatic myopia, his economic irresponsibility, his craven Attorney General, and his retrograde Supreme Court appointees. It’s going to take some true grit not to succumb to complete despair over the next few days.

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Got Out the Vote

Vote KerryIn spite of all the tension coursing through me today, and in spite of all my previous bad-mouthing of John Kerry’s campaign performance in late summer, I think that I’m cautiously optimistic about his chances for winning this election today. I know there are something like thirty-three ways that the various electoral lots can add up to another bitter tie between Bush and Kerry, but I just don’t see that happening somehow. In my gut, I think there will be a relatively decisive victory, whether it’s for one side or the other. This is fueled in part by the early reports of immense voter turnout and the leaked mid-afternoon exit polls I’ve seen — crack for those of us who can’t bear the suspense. I’ll heed the cautions that early exit polls are tremendously unreliable, and I have little doubt that Bush supporters can still manage a clear late-inning victory, but right now, I’m just going to throw aside my rational self. I’ve been waiting four years to cast a ballot for a Democratic challenger and against George W. Bush; so I’m just going to enjoy the lingering sensation of that act for at least a few more hours.

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