Tuesday, May 17, 2016

In-Class Election Exercise

           The story I choose to examine was posted on vox.com and takes a closer look at the presidential election maps that show which states democrats and republicans have won. It goes on to describe how the map is actually very misleading because these maps prioritize geographic accuracy rather than electoral importance. For instance, the 2012 presidential electoral map shows mostly red states but in reality those states that voted republican were just bigger and took up more space on the map making it seem like Romney won the election. When really Obama won even though he won fewer and smaller states they were worth more electoral votes. The article suggests making electoral maps represent each state in a way that shows them as proportional to their electoral importance rather than geographic location. 

       This story employs a combination of quantitative approach and empirical approach. Data is used as a prediction in this story by comparing the old electoral map with The New York Time’s version which depicts the size of each states based on electoral importance not on actual geographic size. This data is used as a prediction that most American’s don’t understand  the presidential electoral map is not as black and white as it appears on your screen. Just because the map may look mainly red that doesn’t mean anything in regard to actual importance to the election. There really isn’t another way the data could be explained since no interviews were conducted on the matter. The whole article is based off of assumption that American’s can be blinded by these maps depictions and that electoral maps should all be made to prioritize electoral importance so the public can understand what it means when a candidate wins a specific state.

Link:
http://www.vox.com/2016/5/17/11686328/bad-election-map

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