So there were already presidential election county maps at both the state and national level. But they were low-quality JPG files that looked kind of fuzzy and low-quality, and good luck figuring out how tiny but significant places like the boroughs of NYC or St. Louis, MO, or San Francisco voted.
I was banned from the Atlas, so I sought to improve Wikipedia's coverage of U.S. elections, from nationwide presidential county maps to NYC mayoral election borough maps.
So I embarked on a project to convert all U.S. election maps to shaded SVG format maps.
No they don't use Atlas colors. I have reverse-color versions that use Atlas colors, but I don't think they look as good. Mainly because it is easier to tell the red shades apart, and Republicans usually win large swaths of the county map with 70, 80, 90+%.
So far I have completed all nationwide presidential election maps going back to 1872. My project has been a bit stalled since then but I hope to get back on it. I switched to making a lot of state-level articles and maps, and more recently have been working on NYC mayoral elections, creating the shaded borough maps for elections from 2013 going back so far to 1953. (I also had to create the previously non-existent articles for 1989-1953).
Being vector-based, the SVG format allows you to zoom in as close as possible, depending on your computer and browser, without any loss of quality. (For example the maps look a LOT better on my MacBook than my antique work computer monitor.)
You can also easily generate a static PNG version of the maps of any size, again, without any loss of quality on Wikimedia where they are uploaded, and use it as a normal image file on a forum.
As an example, here is the 2012 map: Click here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2012nationwidecountymapshadedbypercentagewon.svg and click on the map to view it in fully zoomable format, or render it as a PNG of any size you want.
Here are
1992,
1996,
2000,
2004,
2008, and
2012, in PNG format at a width of 750 pixels:
Here are
1956 and
1960:
Here are
1912,
1916,
1920,
1924, and
1928 followed by
1932/
1936:
For final examples here are
1948 and
1968- I especially HATE the fact that pre-existing maps used green, a color associated with progressivism, to represent backward racist Dixiecrats like Thurmond and Wallace:
Also as mentioned, I have made separate state maps, like New York State
1956 compared to
1960 and
1964 (all 400 pixel width):
Pretty much anywhere on Wikipedia you see a map like that, I made it. Mainly to improve the quality of election maps. If you want to view this format of map for a particular election, just go to the Wikipedia page for that election, e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1948I know Averroës Nix was wondering where these maps came from while I was gone and said he was using them as his desktop and I was quite flattered. Wikipedia's coverage of presidential elections was woefully inadequate. (The sortable state-by-state election result tables for each presidential article from 2000-1872 were also something I added). And I was tired of looking at low-quality JPEG presidential election county maps and upon zooming in (and losing quality with every zoom) realizing the boroughs of New York City weren't even filled in because they would be too small to see anyway, even when those tiny little boroughs outvoted the rest of New York State.
Remember the images I posted here are just static PNGs, if you go view the full SVG versions (and have a modern computer/monitor) you can zoom in as close as possible and just become immersed in election map bliss. What do the forumites of Atlas think of these maps? Any feedback?