OTL Election maps resources thread
- Thread starter Thande
- Start date
Thande
Donor
You know, I've always had this nagging feeling it looked like some country or other, but I've never realised which one up till now...
And thanks.
Thande
Donor
This is a very long project but I'm nearing the end now. Got all the constituencies down and now identifying them all and filling them in for 1918.
Bad news--that whiz bang guy on US Election Atlas was doing the same thing at the same time and has produced a better map; good news, there's less of an inaccuracy in mine than I thought and it's on the standard sized template so it can be more directly compared with later ones, so I wasn't wasting my time.
Thande
Donor
I made a short one of these just for recent years due to a discussion in PC, then I ended up extending it back through time because I felt like it. 1932 is the cutoff year because that's the last one I have a source for that confirms the congressional district borders, and it fits fairly well what with FDR start of an era New Deal and so on.
I might make these for other states in the future, though for now I would definitely concentrate on those with fewer congressional districts to make it easier!
I might make these for other states in the future, though for now I would definitely concentrate on those with fewer congressional districts to make it easier!
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Abhakhazia
Banned
I would say "do Illinois!", but I wouldn't want to put you under that kind of stress. Those gerrymanders have driven men mad.
He wants you to compile your maps into a single image that would flip through as if you were flipping pages. Basically the same thing as those images that display the borders of 1400, then 1500, then 1600, and so on.
Thande
Donor
Oh, an animated GIF, I see. I could maybe do that later (or somebody else could compile them into one) but for now I'm more interested in doing them like this so you can see several years at once. Fortunately you can now do animated PNGs; with the old animated GIF format you'd have ended up with horrible pixellation due to the number of colour shades.
(I didn't understand the bandwidth part because these are quite small images in terms of that--due to the small number of colours and the PNG format, they're only like 150 kilobytes, and an animated GIF or PNG would be rather larger).
Thande
Donor
I'm going to do the states with only one or two congressmen first for simplicity...for places like Illinois, New York and California the problem is not so much the gerrymanders (I already have source maps with all the borders) as the fact that some districts in the urban areas of Chicago/NYC/SF/LA are so small that I'd have to do a zoomed-in inset thing so you can see them.
Thande
Donor
With that in mind, here is Wyoming.
You might think these maps are unnecessarily big as there's only one big district, but the idea is that I'm drawing them all from the same to-scale basemap, and eventually I might reassemble all the state maps for a particular year into a national map.
BTW, Dick Cheney was the sole Representative from 1978 to 1988 (actually 1989 as there was a special election, but I don't show those). Say what you like about the man but Wyoming-ers in the eighties clearly liked him; even in such a 'naturally' Republican state, few people have managed to rack up such consistently high majorities.
Thande
Donor
Yes, absolutely you can as long as you give credit. I really should put a monogramme in the corner like people on US Election Atlas do, but I always forget. I'll stick one on now.
In other news: you would think Alaska is easy because it has only 1 congressional district and it has only existed since 1958. However all those little bitty islands make it ANNOYING to colour in. So I have got it out of the way early.
Thande
Donor
I did have a look at Pennsylvania out of curiosity. I have base maps for earlier decades, but the problem is identifying which congressional district is which because they're not labelled. So at the moment I could only do the past 20 or 30 years' worth of elections.
Thande
Donor
Here is Hawaii. Hawaii is the first state I've done where one congressional district is too small to see easily, so I've experimented with a highlight box thing--what do you think?
Hawaiian politics is, as you would expect, a bit removed from mainland US politics; for example, the urban-rural divide is reversed, with more Republicans in the urban 1st congressional district.
Hawaiian politics is, as you would expect, a bit removed from mainland US politics; for example, the urban-rural divide is reversed, with more Republicans in the urban 1st congressional district.
