Purple and Green America

You probably already know about electoralvote.com, which is one of the many sites that are projecting the electoral college results based on state-by-state polls.


But check out this page on Princeton University's site -- it shows a changing map of all presidential elections since 1960 by county. Red counties voted Republican, blue ones Democratic, and green ones voted for ... someone other than the Republican or Democrat, and that's where it gets interesting.

It's a trip back in third-party time to try and remember what candidates are represented by those green counties. 1960 -- Strom Thurmond, mostly. 1964 -- There's some green in northern Alabama, but I'm not sure who it was for. 1968 -- George Wallace. 1972, 1976 -- nobody. 1980 -- there's not really any trace of John Anderson (my candidate at the time!). 1984, 1988 -- nobody. 1992 -- Ross Perot, all over the West. 1996, 2000 (no sign of Nader) and 2004 -- nobody.

And look at this map of the 2004 election that shows vote density by county. What an incredible use of data.


All courtesy of professor Robert Vanderbei, who appears to do amazing work. And political science isn't even his field -- he's (take a deep breath, the list is long) Professor and Chair, Operations Research and Financial Engineering and Associated Faculty Member of Astrophysics, Computer Science, Mathematics, Applied and Computational Mathematics, and the Bendheim Center for Finance.