Population Density x Political Alignment
What?
The country is divided, and one way to understand that division is a split between city dwellers and low-density areas. This visualization shows the relationship between population density and propensity to vote Democratic.
Why?
Because we are in the midst of a political disaster and doing small hacks is my way of coping. The first time Trump won, I went to hackathon and cobbled together a somewhat politically-relevant Alexa skill, Call Congress. I am under no illusions that this accomplishes anything other than making me feel a little better.
Details
Each circle in the scatterplot is a county.
Size represents population; color represents degree of Republican-leaning (red) vs Democratic-leaning (blue) votes in the specified presidential election. (3rd party votes are ignored)
The x-axis of the scatterplot is the population density (people/miles2) on a log scale.
The y-axis is % of the vote that went Democratic in the given presidential election.
Try selecting a region in the scatterplot or map.
Data Sources
- Election results: MIT Election Data and Science Lab
MIT Election Data and Science Lab, 2018, "County Presidential Election Returns 2000-2020", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/VOQCHQ, Harvard Dataverse, V13, UNF:6:GILlTHRWH0LbH2TItBsb2w== [fileUNF]
- Other: US Census Demographics, Geography.
Credits
Made with Vega-Lite by Mike Travers.
Source.