Integrating the Derivative

Lately I’ve been working with a new style of election map that uses seven discrete colors instead of a continuous range.  I adopted it from Peter Bratt over at West Michigan Rising (see an example here, my maps use the same range).  Below is a side-by-side comparison of the new style using the results from the 2nd Congressional District in 2006.  Any thoughts on which image is easier to interpret?

Results of the 2nd Congressional District election in 2006

2006 Michigan General Election results – Michigan House of Representatives – 100th District

• Goeff Hansen (R) – 19,139 (58.48%)
• Bill Richards (D) – 13,590 (41.52%)

Click the thumbnail to see the full-size image. Also available: 1998 – 2004 maps.  Data from here.

Here’s a list of the 2006 election maps that I’ve completed (all in Michigan):

• Governor
• US Senate (in-progress)
• US House of Representatives, 1st – 15th districts (that’s all of them)
• State Senate, 21st and 34th districts
• State House, 78th and 100th districts

I’ll be putting some of these up on the blog over time. If you’re interested in a particular district’s race that I haven’t done or posted, let me know and I’ll create the map and put it up. I take requests.

It is finished! To your right is a map of the results of the 2006 Michigan gubernatorial race. I calculated the color for each city or township by multiplying 255 by the percentage of the vote that each candidate received (summing up any third party candidates). That gave me the RGB values. A deeper red means a greater percentage of people voted for the Republican candidate (Dick DeVos in this case) and a deeper blue indicates more votes for the Democratic candidate (Jennifer Granholm). If the third party candidates had gotten enough votes you’d see more green in the map. I think the township that had the highest percentage of third party votes was Troy Township in Newaygo County (9.8%).

I used the data from the Michigan Department of State to create the map. You can visit their website here.

Here are some files that I’ve made in the course of this project:

• Excel spreadsheet (617 Kb) containing various data on the gubernatorial race.
• Larger image (1600×1300) of the election map.
• MEGA-SIZE (7000×7000) image of the election map. *BEWARE* This image takes some time to load and is a strain even for the computer I used to make it.
• Blank image of Michigan including cities and township. *Warning* MEGA-SIZE

I’m currently working on maps for the 2nd and 6th congressional districts of the U.S. House of Representatives. I’m sure there’s an easier way to do all this stuff so if you have any suggestions please say so in the comments.

The Michigan Department of State has finally released the results of the 2006 election by precinct on their website. Now I can finish my election map. If anyone knows of any free GIS software that I can use with a database to automatically generate maps, please let me know! That would make my job MUCH easier.

What was I doing yesterday and why did I need a drawing program (I used Gimp by the way)? Look to the left! The image graphically shows the election results (governor only, I do have the data for other races though) for Berrien County on the city and township level. A darker shade of red or blue indicates a greater proportion of Republican or Democrat votes respectively.

I got the idea from Robert Vanderbei’s website. He has the same type of images for the entire US on the county level. I first saw his images spreading on the internet after the 2004 election and I thought it was a neat idea. So I decided to do it on a city/township level for my own county.

This is my first attempt so I could use some feedback. The red and blue shades I picked were fairly arbitrary. I took the extreme edge of the red side of the color map which had a value (hue?) of 360. A value of 260 gave a nice shade of purple and going back a further 100 points to 160 gave a bright shade of blue. I then took the margin over 50% of whichever party happened to win (e.g. if the party won by 56%, I’d take 6), multiplied it by two, and added the result to the midpoint of 260. As an example, that bright spot of blue on the map is the city of Benton Harbor. 93% of the votes were for the Democrats. I got the color I needed by taking (93-50) * 2 and subtracting the result (86) from 260, giving a color value of 174. If anyone has any better ideas on how to do this let me know.

I also put together some spreadsheets for the counties I’m working on. So far I have Newaygo County finished and I’m about halfway done with Berrien County. I’ll upload both of those when I finish with Berrien County. I got the election data for Berrien County from their website and for Newaygo County from Election Magic.

I’m already thinking about creating an image showing turnout too. If you think of something that might be interesting to map out in an image let me know in the comments.

*Update*  I think I figured out the best way to do the colors.  You take the percentage that each party got (grouping third parties into one) and then multiply that by 255 (the max amount in adjusting RGB values) and then put the results into whatever custom color program you’re using.  For example, say Granholm (blue) got 46%, DeVos (red) 50%, and third parties (green) 4%.  Multiplying each percentage by 255 you the following values for Red, Blue, and Green: 128, 117, 10.

Big gains for the Democrats! Nationally they got a majority (gained 28 seats) in the House and a slim majority in the Senate remains a distinct possibility. Here in Michigan the Democrats gained control of the State House, narrowed (by at least one I think) the gap in the State Senate, and kept the governorship.

My predictions turned out to be right on target, although my numbers were apparently far too conservative. Maybe I should submit myself for psychic testing to James Randi. Gov. Granholm was re-elected by a larger margin than I predicted (56-42). I thought it’d be a little closer. U.S. Reps. Pete Hoekstra (R) and Fred Upton (R) and State Rep. Goeff Hansen (R) won easily as expected. State Rep. Neal Nitz (R) won narrowly in the 78th District over Judy Truesdell (D). In the State Senate Gerald Van Woerkom (R) won a close race against Julie Dennis (D) in the 34th with just over 50% of the vote. Ron Jelinek (R) easily won the 21st District over challenger Valerie Janowski (D). Judge Dimkoff in Newaygo County was re-elected to Probate Judge over challenger Lawrence Hanson.

In other statewide elections the Republicans held on to Secretary of State and Attorney General. The Democrats managed to sweep both the State Board of Education and every university election. Incumbent Justices Michael Cavanagh and Maura Corrigan were re-elected to the Supreme Court.

The proposals turned out about as I expected. Proposal 1 passed overwhelmingly with over 80% of the vote. I didn’t expect totals of that size in any proposal! Controversial Proposal 2 passed 58-42. I wasn’t sure which way 2 would go but I was expecting a smaller margin. Nearly 70% of voters rejected the dove hunt of Proposal 3. Proposal 4 was very popular and passed by slightly over 80%. Finally, Proposal 5 was rejected by over 60% of voters.

In other news: My cousin-in-law (?) lost his bid for city council in California, Pennsylvania voters kicked out Sen. Rick Santorum (R), South Dakota rejected amendments banning most abortions and attacking judges, Arizona became the first state to reject a ban on gay marriage (eight other states voted to create bans this election), Florida voters rejected Katherine “church-state separation is a lie” Harris (R), Joe Lieberman (I) defeated Ned Lamont (D) in Connecticut, and Donald Rumsfeld resigned as Secretary of Defense.