3-D ELECTION MAPS:  Showing magnitude and location of votes! 

Max Galka, creator of Metrocosm, has created some awesome data representations. I like his three-dimensional map of the popular vote in the recent presidential election. As he explains in the commentary, the typical red/blue election map is in some ways deceiving. The one below shows the county-level results for the 2016 election. To look at all the red it would appear Republicans dominated the race. In reality, Democrats received a larger share of the popular vote.

One way to show magnitude is by a familiar cartogram, which distorts area to reflect the size of a phenomenon. Another is the three-dimensional map shown above, sometimes called a prism map. By extending each region into the 3rd dimension, it’s possible to show the relative importance of each region while retaining the map’s shape, keeping the areas recognizable. In this case, the height of each county corresponds to its total number of votes.