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Shades of purple

purple presidential

Purple presidential vote/UMich

The world is suddenly full of political maps, some of them cleverly done, showing the results of the presidential race in reds and blues. Not many of them take into account the purples.

After all, as some cartographers at the University of Michigan point out in showing off their purple maps, there are no purely red or blue counties in the United States – someone in all (or nearly all) of them is still voting for the minority party. And in quite a few cases, the margins are pretty thin.

So this map, cropped (to reflect only Washington, Oregon and Idaho) from one developed at the University of Michigan, may be a little more enlightening than most. it was drawn from results in the presidential contest only, so that’s the sole comparison, but it still seems useful. The brightest reds (as in Madison and Franklin counties in Idaho) are the most Republican, and the brightest blues (like King County in Washington and Multnomah in Oregon) are the most Democratic.

(Hat tip to the reader who pointed out the UMich map section.)

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