Creating Maps of 2020 Presidential Election Results

In an effort to better understand the outcomes of the 2020 presidential election, cartographers have been working tirelessly to create detailed maps that illustrate the results. To achieve this, they rely on a variety of data sources and tools to convert complex boundary files into formats that can be easily displayed in a web browser.

One key challenge in creating these maps is binding the 2020 presidential election results to specific U.S. geographies. The Census Bureau Geography Division provides cartographic boundary files for each geography, which are assigned a unique five-digit code called a FIPS code. This code serves as a identifier for each geography, whether it's a county, house district, or ward.

The 2020 presidential election results were reported at the county-level for all U.S. states, with the exception of Alaska and Washington D.C., which were reported at the house district- and ward-level, respectively. To obtain these results, researchers relied on data from various newspapers that published the outcome of the election at the county level.

Using this data, cartographers were able to create static maps using the Mapshaper Command Line Tool and interactive maps using Vue, Vuetify, and D3. The idea for creating these maps originated from a tweet by DJ Patil, which suggested mapping the 2016 presidential election results. John A Guerra Gomez also contributed to this project by providing well-formatted county-level result tables for the 2016 presidential general election.

The data used in creating these maps was scraped from results published by Fox News, Politico, and The New York Times. Additionally, researchers compiled data on presidential election results at the county level for the years 2008, 2012, and 2020 from various sources, including The Guardian and GitHub users.

By utilizing these tools and resources, cartographers have been able to create detailed maps that provide a visual representation of the 2020 presidential election results. These maps can be used to better understand the outcome of the election and identify trends and patterns in voter behavior.

'nytimes 2016 election map'

Nytimes 2016 election map