My students often making sweeping statements about "red states" and "blue states" which don't bear any resemblance to reality. The "red vs. blue" maps that the media trot out after each presidential election may be useful representations of how the Electoral College has voted, but they're useless for anything else, and contribute to grossly simplified views of how people vote. So I decided to go look for a "purple" map.

More below the fold ...

I've been aware for a couple of years that if you mix the colors red (republican), blue (democrat), and green (other) in the proportions that people actually voted, you wind up with a map that's mostly purple. A few quick Google searches turned up a site which goes so far beyond my wishes that I felt compelled to share it with you all. Here:

http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/

These maps don't just go state-by-state; they go county-by-county, mixing colors proportionally. There's an animated map showing county-by-county colors for every presidential election since 1960. There's another really cool one that shows the 2004 election with every county colored in proportion to the votes cast and assigned a height reflecting its population density. New York emerged as a giant blue spike, while Travis County is a prominent purple butte at the edge of the Great Red Flats to its north-west. It's pretty darn cool.