Talk:1992 United States presidential election in Montana

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United States: Presidential elections / Government Low‑importance

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Montana Low‑importance

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Defective filled map

There are many reasons why a filled map is misleading, primarily due to the quantity of color being determined by the land area of the county, creating a strong impression that the candidate who "won" the biggest (area) counties won the state. In addition, candidates don't win counties at all. The fact that these maps can't even tell you who won the state is a major defect. They can't even tell you how well one candidate or another did. What do they tell you? Who "won" each county?

In the case of File:MT1992president.png it fails to tell us that Bill Clinton placed third in fifteen of these counties, with independent candidate Ross Perot just behind George H.W. Bush. In several counties, it's virtually a 3 way tie, such as Toole (35%, 33%, 31%) or Flathead (37%, 29%, 31.%). Why would we want a lead image that obscures these significant facts?

What rational purpose is driving this? What is the encyclopedic goal? The reasons I've been given are that these state election articles have to all look alike, and we have do keep making them the same as they've "always" been made. And that this is a "compromise" between editors.

It's not a compromise between equally matched factual arguments. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 04:26, 12 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, how do people make the maps for these elections? I'd make a proper one if I knew what program they used. Bomberswarm2 (talk) 08:00, 15 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Bomberswarm2 (talk) 06:11, 31 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done? What did you do? It's a slightly nicer looking choropleth map with all the same defects. Can't we just get rid of the filled map, and use the one that shows the results correctly? It was not a two-way race. You can't shoehorn reality to fit the type of map you want to use. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 17:25, 31 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

PalmerTheGolfer (talk)Hi again, I added a citation for the 1992 Map. The argument is being made that one cannot tell the results of the the race by the chloropleth map. The fact is, you cannot discern who won by the pie graph either. And if one does not win counties-what does one call it when a candidate receives more votes in a county. Reputable political analysts use the term "win" with referring to counties all the time. http://cookpolitical.com/story/10201 https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/purple-america-has-all-but-disappeared/ http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/the-2016-streak-breakers/?upm_export=print -Are they wrong? PalmerTheGolfer (talk)PalmerTheGolfer PalmerTheGolfer (talk) 21:05, 31 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they're wrong. They are speaking too losely, using imprecise language. You're interpreting figurative language as "fact".

The correct thing to call it is "got the most votes in the county" or "placed first", not "won the county". Just like "got the most votes from right handed voters with blue eyes" or "received the most votes from voters with a dog". Arbitrary. That's the problem.

Do you "win" census blocks? Or "win" Congressional districts? Zip codes? You have a range of arbitrary divisions you can break an election up with. Then one can say "I won more counties!" while the other candidate says "I won more congressional districts!" or "I won more area codes/zip codes/townships!" It's arbitrary, and it's a meaningless fact. The only fact that means something is who won the most votes in a state. You "win" states. That's all.

You're also wrong about saying you can't tell who won from the pie map. The information about who won is right there in the image. The total area of color shows who won. Yes, in close races it's often very hard to see by the eye which total area of pie slices is larger, but the information is there. With the filled map, the information is not there. No matter how sharp your eyes, no matter how powerful your intellect, the outcome of the election is simply not there. Even in the nearly the most lopsided race, you still can't tell who won. There's only one piece of information and one only: which candidate got the most votes.

There's no perfect graphic that tells everything, and some data sets are harder to visualize than others. But at a minimum, we should use a graph that at least could, in some cases, give the reader good information. The filled map doesn't give the reader any good information even in the best case, save perhaps when a candidate places first in every single county. Other than that, there's no state, no county population distribution, no election result, where the filled county map tells you what happened in the election. That map falls flat on its face even in the best circumstances. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 23:23, 31 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Would anyone be open to the idea of an interactive chloropleth like one used by the NYT? http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/02/12/us/entitlement-map.html It would allow a user to click on a county and find out how many votes were cast in the county, for who, etc. PalmerTheGolfer (talk)PalmerTheGolfer PalmerTheGolfer (talk) 21:37, 2 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]