1996 Presidential returns

        The results of the popular vote in the 1996 U.S. presidential race are visualized above using traditional thematic mapping.  Each state is colored either a shade of red or a shade of blue, denoting the majority winner of each state as Clinton or Dole, respectively, with color saturation indicating the magnitude of the winning percentage.  There is a significant problem with this visualization.  Without prior knowledge of population density across the country, the viewer has no clear indicator as to who actually won the election.  While this map provides a medium of familiarity, it produces an intrinsic distortion of the very data we are trying to analyze.  Since elections are not won on square miles, the results would be better visualized on a map more representative of population.  These same election results are shown below on a 1996 equal population cartogram generated using the Constraint-Based Method.