Rather than opting for a conventional map of the United States of America, which is what we’ve all seen in various shades of red and blue over the numerous elections since the advent of modern broadcasting, Al Jazeera decided to depart from the geographical representation of the physical boundaries of the states.
We believe in the voice of the voiceless, the human story — that’s our editorial mission, and in our visual journalism we felt it should be no different.
The cartogram map, on which we worked with Pitch Interactive, represents each state’s number of electoral college votes.
An already complex democratic system needs simplification rather than any misrepresentation of the actual weight of the colours each state carries. Also, having a topojson reduces the size of SVGs or rudimentary jpegs to make sure that the people coming to us from across the world get instant access.
Every state and every electoral vote counts, but with the majority of the states being ‘winner takes all’, it is important to represent the real impact of the vote rather than going with the traditional approach simply because that’s what’s expected.
The mid-western states in the optical perception carry more weight, hence look more important. Three electoral votes from Wyoming, in contrast to the 20 of Illinois or 29 of New York.
Also, with Nebraska and Maine being multi-colour, supposedly to represent the split electoral vote, rather than striping it or adding an asterix for ‘further info’, we actually get to a have a dedicated hexagon, which represents the voice of the people, via their electoral voters. Speed + Accuracy is the method for any election, especially for one that is big as the US with such far reaching global impact.
