Map shows varied voting patterns

Four years ago, professor Robert Vanderbei created a project for his ORF 201: Computer Methods and Problem Solving class in which they took data from the 2000 election and made a map of America. But unlike most election-year graphics, they did not make theirs look like the standard red-and-blue tilings seen in many publications.

Events that began with a simple Google search for political maps of the country eventually led to Vanderbei's election map appearing in U.S. News and World Report this week.

Instead of the usual red and blue, Vanderbei's map is an array of purples, with tones indicating different balances between the two major parties. Rather than highlighting each state in a color just by who won, he separates America into its counties. The resulting map is mostly purple, showing the mixture of Republicans and Democrats living together across America.

"Four years ago, just after the election, I found the maps inadequate," Vanderbei said. "Why paint a state red if the winner had only won by a few votes? I thought it would be a good project to color the country according to county and actual election data for each person."

Vanderbei utilized data from the USA Today website and from the United States Census Bureau in order to create his map, but combining the information was not simple.

"The data from the two sources didn't match. The census information showed borders for counties, but some states are divided into parishes or townships and not by county, so it was hard to figure out some of it," he said.

The map was placed on the website for his class and Vanderbei forgot about it until a year ago when he was contacted by a political scientist at Hamilton College.

"He was writing an article similar to the one in U.S. News," Vanderbei said. "His point of view was that the division in America is overblown and that in most places Republicans and Democrats are living together perfectly well."

"He must have used Google and found my map and asked if he could use it."

After the first article, the map appeared in Princeton Alumni Weekly. Vanderbei said he suspects a Princeton alumnus may have been responsible for the email he received from U.S. News and World Report asking to use his map for an article.

As for the upcoming election, Vanderbei said he expects it either to be as close as expected or a landslide.

"It's fascinating to me how interesting this is to everybody because it seems to be one of most important elections in my lifetime. I'm sort of apolitical all the time, most of my life, but I'm not apolitical this time."

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It turns out that Vanderbei's map was rediscovered at the right time.

"A man at Cornell was planning on doing the exact same thing during the last couple of months," Vanderbei said. "He contacted me after the U.S. News article came out and asked if I had just come up with the map in the last couple of weeks."

"I told him 'No, I did it four years ago,'" he said.

Vanderbei said he plans to make similar maps after the 2004 election data is released.