Veteran kossack here, posting for the first time under this handle.
No, it's not a Simpsons reference; it's my actual real name.
In any case, Comic Book Guy himself couldn't match the geek quotient of the content after the jump -- and I'm pleased enough by it to publish it under my own name.
So let's get to that sweet, delicious electoral college map porn.
The electoral college maps we have become used to base themselves on standard-projection U.S. maps. For example, DailyKos frontpagers have borrowed maps from 270 To Win. Here's the 270 to Win representation of the 2012 electoral college map, with colors assigned according to 2008 results:
There are a number of problems with presenting the data this way.
First, the scaling method is inconsistent: most states are sized according to how much geographic area they cover, but AK, HI, and DC are exceptions.
Second, these same exceptions make the map discontinuous. The separation of these states from the rest of the map makes it harder to view the map as a coherent whole.
Third, the representation of NE and ME, which apportion their electoral votes both statewide and by district, is problematic.
270 To Win distinguishes a state which splits its electoral votes by color: its map shows NE as purple. But because color already indicates the winning party, users might interpret the split-vote color as a third-party color.
Further, since all split-vote allocations are represented by a single color, separate "Maine Split" and "Nebraska Split" indicators are needed to show a split state's electoral vote breakdown.
Fourth, and most fundamentally, such maps exaggerate the electoral importance of lightly-populated states. WY appears much larger than DE, for instance, though their number of electors is the same. For this reason, though the map signals a solid 359-179 Obama victory in the electoral college, the map is more red than blue.
MY ELECTORAL COLLEGE MAP...
...addresses these issues:
This representation is based on a cartogram I created.
Here, each district is sized according to the number of electoral votes it has, without exception.
This includes congressional districts in NE and ME, which are indicated by dashed interior borders in those states. This design means no additional indicators are needed to represent electoral vote splits.
This means the colored area representing the winner will always be greater than the colored area representing the loser:
As you can see, my representation unambiguously signals the magnitude of a 359-179 Obama electoral college victory.
GEEKTASTIC BONUS CONTENT: I've created an electoral college calculator based from this; it's available at the Electoral College Calculator blog, along with other compelling content.