Mad Social Scientist

Here'a color image plot of the election returns by county. I'm a bit wary of the political message of the plot. From making lots of similar plots, I know that it is hard to objectively convey variance in such a plot, because the color scale can be stretched or squished. You can make everything from 20 - 90% look purplish, or instead just regions from 40-60%. What these plots are best at is telling you where things are more red or more blue, but not how far from the poles they are. (Note further than there is no color scale attached to the linked plot. And final, there is the famous areal unit problem. This plot takes county boundaries for granted. But the choice of boundary can make the map look more divided are more unified. (In the limit, the plot converges to a single purplish shape, or 120 million red and blue squares.) Is the county-ization of the US making the plot look more unified than, say, precinct boundaries? I think so.