The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in unprecedented mail-in voting and delays in ballot counting. With all this in mind, we should ask ourselves two questions when we look at any U.S. Web maps can automatically reload with fresh data, but such updates may be misunderstood if care isn’t taken to contextualize them. “Affordances” such as legends that appear when users hover over parts of the map also help put more information on the map and into readers’ hands. Some interactive maps also let users drill deeper to get “ details on demand” - to see county level rather than just national level results. For instance, web maps might allow “ re-symbolization” to show the data in a different way. Unlike print maps, web maps often allow their users to customize design. Professional mapmakers - cartographers - know these tools are both promising and limited. Since so many of us consume the news online, it was interactive maps embedded in websites that offered the most important windows onto the vote. So what did this year’s election maps rightly or wrongly tell us? Mapping on the web While maps have long been used for political propaganda, even maps from sources without a partisan bent “lie.” They are, at best, partial representations of reality - statistical and design choices about what to illustrate and how. news outlets such as the CBC, Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail, Fox News and the New York Times. I tracked 10 election maps from Canadian and U.S. presidential election, people were glued to screens big and small for the latest results to be flashed on electoral maps. Read the original article.Īs the world awaited a winner in the U.S. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence.

Nytimes detailed election map