An attempt to show colors and shades:
Note that any color of "5" or higher gives black at any level of saturation. Nothing brings about white, which I find interesting on overlaps between elections, as in my favorite (Eisenhower against Obama, which seems to suggest that Ike and Obama ended up with similar constituencies)
Colors are done to show the effects of shades.
For my purposes I would make these suggestions:
1. The 'interesting zone' for contests is really between "48" (in three way races) to "55" A distinction between winning 50 and 49 is obvious, but I would figure that any distinction between "50", "51", "52", "53", "54", and "55" is significant. A majority (50) always wins, but although "51" could still be razor-thin, "52" indicates at least a 4% difference, which is near the margin of error, "53" indicates at least a 6% difference, which is outside the margin of error, "54" indicates at least an 8% difference about twice the margin of error, and "55" indicates beyond any doubt an election that is not really close. "60" and higher indicate blowouts, and I would find it easier to put "56" and "62" in the same category than "51" and "55". Anything closer to 60 than to 50 is not close.
I would like options for gradations between 50 and 55 such as 50, 52, 54, and 55.
Of course, I always display a legend when I make any deviation from Leip's norm for any reason.
2. I miss yellow, but not orange. "Dark orange" colors were ugly in the old scheme and I did everything possible to avoid using them. "Dark yellow" came off as tan. Purple is nice to have.
"3" is green and "4" is purple.
3. A grayscale pattern would be of use, as in an election-day scenario.
