An Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections

It's three weeks from Election Day 2012 and their are plenty of interactive maps out there for a person to click on swing states until they're blue in the face -- or, if you're of a different political persuasion, red in the face.  One of my favorite sites is run by Dave Leip -- appropriately named "Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections."

Dave Leip's site has been around since the 90s.  It has had interactive user-generated information for Presidential elections since 2004. The site allows you to predict what you think will happen in the Presidential race, as well as each Senate and Gubernatorial race.  You can also make a prediction on each primary contest. All of these can be updated at any time until the election.

First you choose who you think will win each state red or blue (or third party), and then in a separate map you can choose your confidence level:

A confidence map on Dave's site.

Darker states rate as "solid"; lighter as "lean".  Grey states count as toss-ups.  Each person puts in whatever they'd like. 

Wait wait, you say? The colors are backwards?

Yep, that's right.  The reds and the blues are backwards.  Dave designed the site before the 2000 election, when "red states" and "blue states" took off in the national lexicon.  Dave used the color schemes used in some other parts of the world where "red" = "liberal" and "blue" = "conservative."

The great thing is that after a number of people enter their predictions, the site aggregates the predictions and gives a pretty good middle of the road prediction on where things may stand.

Compiled predictions of all users of Dave's Atlas as of 16 October 2012.

Plus it keeps track of where the aggregation has been in the past, broken down by confidence:

Aggregate history for the Republican Primary predictions.
(Romney=green, Gingrich=blue, Santorum=orange, Perry=tan, Paul=yellow, Tossup=grey)

On top of this there is historical data going way back to Washington in 1789 and historical electoral college calculators also going all the way back. You can use an electoral college calculator with the correct number of historical votes to see what happened, or what might have happened. There is county-level data going back to 1964, plus all sorts of other, state-level data.

County-level 1976 data. Note the concentration in Georgia, home of Jimmy Carter.

Plus, there's all sorts of polling information. But, to be honest, there's another polling site I like much better.

It's a wonderful site, full of more information than I can share here.  Go check it out.

You're Going to Make (a Map) After All

I've been on a 1970s groove as of late -- possibly due to Hulu's recent addition of the first three seasons of The Mary Tyler Moore Show to its offerings.  With Minneapolis as its setting, the show highlighted life in the Twin Cities in the early part of the decade.

The then-and-now factor is worth noting.

The tallest building in the Twin Cities in 1970 -- which is when The Mary Tyler Moore Show first aired -- was the Foshay Tower, built in 1929. The Quest Building and Minneapolis City Hall were built in 1932 and 1909 and came in second and third place.  You can see these all in this shot from the opening credits, as Mary drives into town in her white Mustang.

The Foshay Tower is on the left (the "St Paul" sign is pointing to it), the Qwest Building (at the time known as the Northwestern Bell Building) is in the middle behind and slightly to the right of the overpass below Minneapolis's arrow, and the City Hall it the building that looks like a castle off to the right. 

The great thing about Google StreetView is that you can compare this to today.

The Foshay is still barely visible, in front of the IDS Center, built in 1975.  Everything else in the Mary Tyler Moore still is pretty well obscured.  But even though the exit ramp seems to have moved, the overpass toward which she is driving looks distinctly the same.

To give you an idea of what the Minneapolis skyline looked like back then, here's a 1975 photo from the Minnesota Historical Society. The Foshay Tower is on the left.  The big building in the center is the then-newly-built IDS Center.  The picture is probably taken from the top of City Hall.

Here is another view of the skyline in 1975.  Loring Park is in the foreground. The IDS Center is on the left and the Foshay is just to the right of it.

Compare this to the 2007 skyline.  Loring Park, where the above photo was taken, would be is just a bit to the left.  The IDS Center is still prominent, but the Foshay Tower is harder to find -- it's the shorter building, right in the middle of the photo.  Minneapolis, it seems, grew up.

[photo credit: Steve Lyon]

I suppose a blog post about Mary Tyler Moore on a map blog wouldn't be complete without a map to the statue of her on Nicollet Mall, right?

Tornado Outbreaks

The Super Outbreak of April 3-4, 1974, was until last week the largest tornado outbreak in American history. One hundred forty-eight tornados rampaged across thirteen US states and the Canadian province of Ontario, killing over 300 people.

1974 Super Outbreak. Map from NWS

Though I was too young to remember the outbreak, I was told stories about the event when I was young. My dad was in Xenia, Ohio, on business the morning of the outbreak, and left the town only hours before it was hit by an F5 in late afternoon. Between that story and other tornado sightings in the 60s by members of the family, tornadoes were talked about a lot when I was growing up. Add to this that the house we lived in had no basement, and you might see why I have a fascination with tornadoes.

Last week’s April 25-28, 2011, outbreak killed over 350 people. Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, Alabama, were especially hard hit, but devastation was seen all over the South. On April 27 alone, there were 257 tornadoes, with more than 425 over the four-day period.

2011 Outbreak.  Map from NWS

Different mapping technologies over the 40-year span, yes. But it's the length of the 2011 paths that you can really only see in the maps that really gets me.