I love maps, especially ones of election results. They fascinate me, and in fact are the reason I started following politics around the 2004 presidential election. However, too often they're just not very good. The red/blue dichotomy tells us who won, but nothing else. Even giving different shades of red or blue doesn't do enough, as not all land is created equal. Most attempts to fix this problem involve distorting the shape of states or counties until they're hardly recognizable. With that in mind, and with a question I wanted to answer, I set out to make maps of various states in order to understand how their voting patterns changed between 2004 and 2012 in a more serious manner than just looking at PVI shifts. In doing so, I also wanted to see which pieces of conventional wisdom are or aren't true. For example, the media has always said the Denver Suburbs were decisive in turning Colorado from red to purple, but is that true? You can find that out and a whole bunch more below the fold.
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