#cartogram

THE POWER OF CARTOGRAMS:  These two maps both depict the results of the recent senatorial vote in Georgia. They both have the same color scheme for the margin of victory per county –– a continuous blue-red scale.

But the cartogram on the right graphically depicts the demographic proportions involved and thereby explains how Warnock could win while victorious in only 30 out of 159 counties.

The cartogram really illustrates the power of people's votes. I wish the press and news media would use more cartograms, since it is so hard to understand the demographic realities from a conventional map. 

wales, deformed according to number of welsh speakers

Randall Munroe of xkcd created the 2020 election map above. Click here for a way big version.

Chris Cillizza at CNN compared Randall’s map with those county maps which Donald Trump loves so much.

Trump's favorite map shows that if land voted, he would have won a massive, sweeping victory in 2016. Which he didn't. Because people vote. (Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes to Clinton, but won the Electoral College.)

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I like Munroe's map so much because it gets us away from the traditional red-blue dynamic, painting counties and even states with very broad brushes. It shows there are plenty of Democrats in some parts of Alabama and lots of Republicans even in Southern California. We aren't just colors on a map. The politics of the country are far more complex (and interesting!) than that.

When it comes to county maps, I prefer the cartogram approach as depicted on the bottom here.

Loud rumblings from outside the town just so happened to coincide with the lighthouse bridge falling deep into the ravine. Now, the light has stopped and no word from the lighthouse keeper. Someone needs to work out whats happened and get that light on before the next scheduled ship arrives and meets a fate upon the rocks. If your players decide to try and run through the ravine and under the bridge, the tide comes flooding in ever second turn. This requires a strength check to see if your players can stand against it, or risk being swept out to sea.

How the world’s population has changed and where it’s going