How red is the country, and how blue are we? Well, even in 2000, I wanted to see the colors of the states mixed, so we could see how purple each one was.
Go here to see a variety of ways of looking at the red-blue situation from the 2004 presidential election. He shows the typical lower 48 red-blue map, and then one warped to show it as though each county were sized by population, then a flat map in purples, and then the purples map twisted to match the population of each county:
Much more good cartographic stuff all “licensed under a Creative Commons License. Text and images may be freely distributed.”
The website Dan pointed us to is fascinating, and cheers me up a great deal. I've debated politics since Goldwater and voted since I was old enough, but until the last presidential election, I had never donated time nor money. But I felt so strongly that our very existence as a country and maybe as a species was at risk, this last time I gave as much as I could of both. I spent a lot of time at the local democratic headquarters making calls, going house to house with literature, and generally doing what I could to ensure GWB would not be elected again. It isn't that I was pro Kerry. I was just so anti-Bush. I would have voted for a sweet potato had that been the choice. (And as much as I respect what Nader has done for American consumers, he didn't do what was right in the last election and chosing him was effectively choosing Bush). I felt like, and still feel, that no one would be worse that what we had.
I was horrified with the election results. I looked around me (I was in a 'red' state) and wondered how the people around me could be so utterly misguided. How could they approve of our invasion of another country on false pretences? How could they approve laws stripping us of our freedoms? I wondered if I really wanted to be American. I was born abroad, to American citizens, so I have a foreign birth certificate and dual citizenship. I could emigrate easily. It crossed my mind, but I resigned myself to staying put, and decided to never put so much of myself in a political campaign again. After all, I thought, if people can vote for an idiot warmonger, what good can my efforts do? Time has not changed my opinion.
But I consider it very good news that I was wrong about the people around me. I obviously think many made the wrong choice, but now I don't feel like 90% of the people around me are idiots. Maybe there are enough intelligent folks to save us yet. But they better hurry.