Dynamic Map of 2016 Election

Justin Hart
Jul 10, 2017 · 4 min read

As I noted in my previous post I’m getting back into using Tableau — the top notch data analysis and business intelligence tool.

I’ve refined my mapping skills a bit more on my favorite topic — the 2016 Presidential election. Here’s a narrative I’d like to present piece by piece.

First, we have our traditional look at the map of the election by county. The red and blue represent the traditional parties (GOP and DEMs respectively). The numbers indicate the margin of victory. (For convenience I did this as a difference from the Dem vote — so a -55% in Elko County, NV means that the GOP won that vote by 55 points. A “48%” notation in the lower left shows L.A. county which went decisively to Hillary.)

The size of the font notes the larger population of that county.

2016 US Presidential Election by County in 2 Colors *red = GOP majority vote county / blue = DEM majority vote county **negative totals indicate a margin favoring a GOP majority county / positive totals indicate a Democrat majority county **size of the font indicates the relative population of that county

I’m showing this thread to demonstrate the granularity of election and trends moving in a specific direction. Right now the map is swimming in geographic red but the picture become clearer as we add more scale to the color.

Here’s the same map and election but in 4 colors — adding light red and light blue:

2016 US Presidential Election by County in 4Colors *red = GOP majority vote county / blue = DEM majority vote county **negative totals indicate a margin favoring a GOP majority county / positive totals indicate a Democrat majority county **size of the font indicates the relative population of that county

The point of this exercise is to identify counties where the next battles might be fought for the 2018 midterms and the 2020 election. Let’s narrow the margin of difference between the 2 parties to 10% points.

2016 US Presidential Election by County within a 10% margin

Let’s hover over a county and see the specifics. Back to California in deep blue territory you can see margin of difference is about 3%.

Riverside County, California Presidential Election 2016

Now if I were a political consultant I wouldn’t recommend spending any GOP money in these territories so let’s take a look at another county in tight electoral state.

Jefferson County, Colorado — 2016 Election

Look at all the counties in play in Colorado where Secretary Clinton beat Trump by 136K votes. So many counties in play with lots of votes to swing one way or another. This should be an interesting fight.

You can see the number of counties within 10 points in the crucial states of Michigan and Wisconsin which put Trump over the top. Looks to be a big battleground going forward:

Wisconsin and Michigan — 2016 election

For a larger picture let’s look at the critical “blue curtain” for the Democrats in 2008’s race between President Obama and Senator McCain in our 4 color chart. Some deep blues happening against the GOP here:

2008 Presidential election by County — Northeast

Fast forward 8 years and the 4-color chart is dramatically different:

2016 presidential election by county northeast

Shades of red creep across the entire area. As we’ve noted elsewhere Democrats have been losing elections for a long time.

Here you go… play around with the dynamic Tableau worksheet for your enjoyment. See if you can find the specific targets your team needs to go after.

Or you can try your hand at some more complicated items like machine learning to understand the election.

— about the author:

Justin Hart is a senior executive consultant.

His primary objective: plumb the deep depths of cutting edge technologies and translate those into c-suite strategies to improve marketing and sales teams.

shorter version: mktg + bizdev + ai

Justin is a recognized industry speaker on modern marketing trends. He is currently working with several companies applying advanced tech tools like machine learning and artificial intelligence to business funnel basics.

You can find his work online at justinhart.biz.
Email Justin at justinhart.biz at gmail.
On twitter
@justin_hart.
On Medium
Justin Hart

Justin has over 20 years experience as a senior executive of established and start-up companies and even political campaigns (as senior digital director to the Mitt Romney campaign). He currently resides in Southern California.

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