I stayed glued to the New York Times website for Super Tuesday primary results, switching from map view to delegate count to percentage of the vote. I liked this map feature that tallied results on a separate Democat or Republican map with a mouse-over of the map that revealed good details.
Wired ran a nice overview of election coverage on the Web, so I decided to take a tour with an eye toward how mapping was used to display election results.
- MTV’s election coverage featured a map displaying reporters, but not much else in the way of mapping.
- MSNBC’s interactive map was not much more than a point and click to details that appeared below, with no information appearing on the map. Kind of disappointing.
- ABC News ran a nice interactive map that provides state snapshots in the same window when you click on the map, but no overall results for the country as a map view.
- The Washington Post has one of the most detailed political maps that I’ve ever seen. It takes a while to understand all that’s going on here at this information-rich display, but there’s true insight to be had when you poke around a bit. The map is used here to give details into strategy and trends. There are tabs for individual candidates and regions, explaining why California is so important of why the South factors into specific campaign. The running delegate count for both parties was particularly helpful on the same map view as I had to dig deeply on other sites.
Overall, I’ve got to say that the Internet was my first choice for insight. I didn’t miss the ongoing and often repetitive television coverage, and I got a chance to really delve into areas and candidates that interest me. These sites hit and missed with mapping, but I’m sure that they’ll continue to do a better job as the campaign approaches. I’ve bookmarked the New York Times and Washington Post for future visits. If you’re a political junkie with a map bent, I encourage you to do the same.
