Donald Trump loves to brag by pointing to a map of how every county voted in last year’s presidential election, never mind that 55 percent of Americans reside in a county where Clinton beat Trump. Somehow, this sea of red with islands and archipelagos of blue is supposed to prove something as if the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of “one acre, one vote” instead of “one person, one vote.” So Texas Christian University geography professor Kyle Walker decided to see what that county-level map would look like if he removed all the areas that are uninhabited.
As shown on Walker’s map at the top of this post (see here for a larger version), there’s a whole swath of the mountain West and plains regions in particular where nobody lives, or at least there’s nobody living in the smallest geographical unit available for population analysis, the census block. Of course, since this map says nothing about the population densities of various inhabited areas, it still poorly conveys the fact that most Americans live in counties Clinton won, let alone that she won more individual votes than Trump.
One would need a cartogram where the counties are sized according to their population to more faithfully demonstrate the idea of how the counties Clinton won are actually home to most Americans. Of course, with 3,142 counties nationally, any cartogram of the entire country will massively distort the shapes to the point where most are simply unrecognizable.
Even the cartogram still wouldn’t tell you anything about which candidate won the most votes or the Electoral College, which is why pointing to a national county map of any sort to “prove” who won the election or represents the “real” America like Trump does is a dumb idea in the first place.