Redraw America: Change the 21st Century

[heatcharger]

Have fun with it.

https://redraw-america.github.io/

Out of quarantine boredom, I decided to take Kevin Wilson's Redraw the States tool, and do a couple things:

1. The 2000, 2004, and 2008 elections are now available.
2. The 2012 and 2016 election results are now up-to-date.

On #2, the election results data now comes from the MIT Election Data and Science Lab, not Townhall. I noticed Townhall's election results were out-of-sync with Dave Leip's US Election Atlas, a brand which I trust. Leip compiles his data from Reflection of Vote statements and state SoS websites, and I assume MIT's data does the same based on what I've glanced at.

Also before, the 2012 and 2016 election results included third-party results, but MIT's dataset generalizes third-party support as "Other", which is an unfortunate loss of granularity. But I thought it was worth it to get the most accurate results. The 2000 results do separate out Nader votes, however.

Known issue: A bunch of independent cities in Virginia are inaccessible via the map. I haven't touched the visualization paradigm that Wilson set up, and I don't plan on it. I just wanted to provide more elections to play with, as well as more accurate data. Have fun with it.

[heatcharger]

Interesting note: when getting the 2008 results, I noticed Obama's EV count was 2 shy of his actual EV count. I don't account for his win in NE-2, but the other was due to NC having one less EV and UT having one more EV than reality. I tried to figure out if I was over/under-counting population somewhere -- turns out this was no mistake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_Census#Utah_controversy

To adjust for this, I arbitrarily reduced the population by a few thousand in a few counties in Utah. I hope this doesn't offend anyone.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Thanks for bringing this to my attention!

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Quiz question: in what election since 1996 would an area composed of WV+Loudoun (VA)+MontCo (MD)+Howard (MD) be decided by the closest margin in terms of numerical votes?

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

This is great! Is there a way to program it so it doesn't reset every time you change years?

[heatcharger]

This is great! Is there a way to program it so it doesn't reset every time you change years?

Honestly that's something I wanted to make possible as well but I ran out of motivation lol. I'll take a look into that later.

[LimoLiberal]

Quiz question: in what election since 1996 would an area composed of WV+Loudoun (VA)+MontCo (MD)+Howard (MD) be decided by the closest margin in terms of numerical votes?

off the top of my head

2000: WV closest (51-46?) +50,000 Loudoun R by 15ish points, +15,000, Montgomery D by 30ish, -100,000 Howard D by 6ish, -10,000 Gore wins by 45,000ish

2004: WV 55-42ish, +90,000, Loudoun R by 10ish, +12,000, Montgomery D by 30ish, -130,000, Howard D by 10ish, -15,000, Kerry wins by 43,000ish

2008: Obama matched Kerry in WV and did better in all the other counties, Obama +more than Kerry, definitely not the closest.

2012: Romney barely improved on McCain in the close-in DC burbs, I think Loudoun was the biggest improvement maybe Obama +10 to Obama +5? But I think Obama held up pretty well in Howard and Montgomery. Which makes WV's hard-right swing the most relevant info here... 61-35ish for Romney, maybe +175,000? With Montco giving Obama probably 70% of the vote, maybe 500,000 votes total, so -200,000? With Howard maybe 58% Obama at 150,000, so -24,000. And Loudoun another -5000?.
That's Obama winning by 59,000ish.

2016: Ok now it gets harder. Trump 70% in WV with boosted turnout, +300,000. Hillary wins Loudoun 55-38, -30,000. Montgomery by a lot - believe Trump below 20! -270,000. Howard also by a lot, 65-30?, -50,000. So that's Hillary by 50,000ish.

2004 is my guess. 2000 and 2016 the next two.

[Epaminondas]

Really good find!
But how do you zoom out? I get stuck zooming in and the mouse scroll doesn't work.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

This is great! Is there a way to program it so it doesn't reset every time you change years?

Honestly that's something I wanted to make possible as well but I ran out of motivation lol. I'll take a look into that later.

Thank you.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Quiz question: in what election since 1996 would an area composed of WV+Loudoun (VA)+MontCo (MD)+Howard (MD) be decided by the closest margin in terms of numerical votes?

off the top of my head

2000: WV closest (51-46?) +50,000 Loudoun R by 15ish points, +15,000, Montgomery D by 30ish, -100,000 Howard D by 6ish, -10,000 Gore wins by 45,000ish

2004: WV 55-42ish, +90,000, Loudoun R by 10ish, +12,000, Montgomery D by 30ish, -130,000, Howard D by 10ish, -15,000, Kerry wins by 43,000ish

2008: Obama matched Kerry in WV and did better in all the other counties, Obama +more than Kerry, definitely not the closest.

2012: Romney barely improved on McCain in the close-in DC burbs, I think Loudoun was the biggest improvement maybe Obama +10 to Obama +5? But I think Obama held up pretty well in Howard and Montgomery. Which makes WV's hard-right swing the most relevant info here... 61-35ish for Romney, maybe +175,000? With Montco giving Obama probably 70% of the vote, maybe 500,000 votes total, so -200,000? With Howard maybe 58% Obama at 150,000, so -24,000. And Loudoun another -5000?.
That's Obama winning by 59,000ish.

2016: Ok now it gets harder. Trump 70% in WV with boosted turnout, +300,000. Hillary wins Loudoun 55-38, -30,000. Montgomery by a lot - believe Trump below 20! -270,000. Howard also by a lot, 65-30?, -50,000. So that's Hillary by 50,000ish.

2004 is my guess. 2000 and 2016 the next two.

yep it was 2004.

[bagelman]

Wow, how did you do all this? Very good work!

I tried a similar project with mapster a while back, which I think is better than KHW in that you can actually create new states. However, every time I tried to save a new .csv file on it, it threw up an error.

Edit: should note I'm not the creator of mapster, I just tried (and failed) to do the same thing you did with it.

I've always wanted to do this to 2008

[Figueira]

Nice work, heatcharger and bagelman! Here's a similar thing: https://tonymoo2228.github.io/StatesFun/

It's a little easier to zoom in and out (and Virginia has all its cities) but moving counties out of existing states can be a bit cumbersome as you have to use the eraser tool.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

A more fair electoral college

[Former President tack50]

My attempts at flipping each election with as few county moves as possible and keeping the states contiguous (also ignoring Hawaii, Alaska and DC):

2000:
Move Escambia County FL to AL
(1 county move; Gore wins 291-247 by flipping Florida)

2004:
Move Butler County OH to IN
Move Beaver and Allegheny Counties PA to OH
(3 county moves; Kerry wins 272-266 by flipping Ohio)

2008:
Move Boone, Kenton Counties KY to IN
Move Greenville County SC to NC
Move Clark County NV to AZ
Move Cuyahoga, Lake, Ashatabula Counties OH to NY
Move Erie County PA to NY
Move Philadelphia, Montgomery, Delaware Counties PA to NJ
Move Hennepin, Ramsey, Washington Counties MN to WI
Move Mower County MN to IA
Move Clay County MN to ND
Move Baldwin, Mobile, Houston Counties AL to FL
Move Harrison, Jackson, Hancock, Pearl River, Lamar Counties MS to FL
Move St. Tammany Parish LA to FL
Move Leon County FL to GA

McCain wins 272-266 by flipping NV, MN, IN, OH, PA, NC and FL
Counties swapped: 26

2012:
Move Baldwin County AL to FL
Move Leon County FL to GA
Move Philadelphia County PA to NJ
Move Lake, Cook Counties IL to WI
Move Clark County NV to AZ

Romney wins 270-268 by flipping NV, IL, PA and FL
Counties swapped: 6

2016:
Move Lucas County OH to MI
Move Mercer County NJ to PA

Clinton wins 270-268 by flipping MI and PA

IMO the hardest by far and probably the one with the most improvement is 2008; forcing a McCain win is very hard without moving a ton of counties

[Storr]

It's depressing how arbitrary  the electoral college is.

Blue Florida! (and Dakota Unification)

1. I decided to merge the Dakotas and make South Dakota into South California (divided along the SLO-Kern-San Bernardino northern boundary line).

2. Moved Florida west of the Apalachicola River (the old West Florida/East Florida boundary line from colonial days) to Alabama.

3. Moved four SWPA counties (Greene, Fayette, Somerset, and Beford) as well as the two furthest west Maryland counties for geographical cleanliness (Garrett and Allegany) to West Virginia.

2016 Result:
Hilary: 282
Trump: 256

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

It's depressing how arbitrary  the electoral college is.

Blue Florida! (and Dakota Unification)

1. I decided to merge the Dakotas and make South Dakota into South California (divided along the SLO-Kern-San Bernardino northern boundary line).

2. Moved Florida west of the Apalachicola River (the old West Florida/East Florida boundary line from colonial days) to Alabama.

3. Moved four SWPA counties (Greene, Fayette, Somerset, and Beford) as well as the two furthest west Maryland counties for geographical cleanliness (Garrett and Allegany) to West Virginia.

2016 Result:
Hilary: 282
Trump: 256

Alternatively, you can just do that Florida split and move the Upper Peninsula to Wisconsin, turning Michigan blue in a 276 D-262 R election.

[Orser67]

First thing I did was see if the FL split (giving the counties west of the Apalachicola River to AL) would change the 2000 result; unsurprisingly, it does. Moving those counties would also change the results of the 2016 presidential election in FL (although not 2004), and I assume it would do the same for the 2018 Senate and gubernatorial elections, the 2014 gubernatorial election, and the 2010 gubernatorial election.

Edit: And thank you OP for adding this functionality

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This was all my work except for the screenshots taken the app itself which came to serve as sort of a template.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

First thing I did was see if the FL split (giving the counties west of the Apalachicola River to AL) would change the 2000 result; unsurprisingly, it does. Moving those counties would also change the results of the 2016 presidential election in FL (although not 2004), and I assume it would do the same for the 2018 Senate and gubernatorial elections, the 2014 gubernatorial election, and the 2010 gubernatorial election.

Edit: And thank you OP for adding this functionality

It changes the results of the following:
FL-PRES 2000
FL-PRES 2016
FL-SEN 2004
FL-SEN 2018
FL-GOV 2010
FL-GOV 2014
FL-GOV 2018

[President of the great nation of 🏳️‍⚧️]

2016 forever:
2000
2004
2008
2012
2016

[President of the great nation of 🏳️‍⚧️]

Each election from 2000 to 2016 but the state map matches the previous election.
2000
2004
2008
2012
2016

[VPH]

This is so cool! I had been hoping for such a tool for a while.

[Karpatsky]

This is great! Is there a way to program it so it doesn't reset every time you change years?

You can achieve this by manually changing the year in the share link.

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

2000 at 400 electoral votes for Gore.

[heatcharger]

This is great! Is there a way to program it so it doesn't reset every time you change years?

You can achieve this by manually changing the year in the share link.

I hadn't even thought of that -- thanks for pointing it out! Using LouisvilleThunder's Gore landslide and changing the "year=2000" to "year=2016" makes it easy to see his sick, twisted version of Virginia go from being Gore +1.6 to Clinton +16.2 or Arkansas go from Gore +0.06 to Trump +24.5.

Fascinating maps folks.