One of my conservative friends has a t-shirt with the famous color coded map of the United States showing which counties went Republican (red) and which went for Democrats (blue). This map is fun to rub in the noses of liberals, but it is not very instructive. Geographically large counties with a sparse population favor Republicans and geographically small counties with dense populations favor Democrats.

Mark Newman from the Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan has produced maps that correct for the populations densities (LINK). I have animated some of his maps (below).

The maps are described on his web page: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/

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