Red States and Blue States. Since 2000 when President Bush won the Electoral College but not the popular vote, the Red State/Blue State Electoral College Map has been burned into our heads.

It is an accurate map, representing the allocation of electoral votes, but it seems to be understood to mean much more than that. It is often invoked to express drastic geographic and philosophical divide between the Blue States and the Red States, with an implied homogeneity in each. Voters who backed Kerry can easily become disheartened looking at that map. Voters who backed Bush can easily become overconfident.

In reality, the divide is great, but it doesn’t fall along the lines of the Red State/Blue State map. This site aims to give a different view of the situation.

The colors on this map represent how each of the states split their votes amongst Bush and Kerry voters. If a state was evenly split, the color is mid-way along the Red to Blue spectrum - Purple. If the state was more for Bush than Kerry, the color is closer to the Red end of the spectrum and vice-versa.

This map is based on figures reported by the New York Times.