Presidential Elections Used to Be More Colorful

September 14, 2015

Click the map to stop and start the animation

Looking over the historical results of U.S. presidential elections, I keep coming back to the same conclusion: the political landscape we’ve been living in for the past few decades is really not normal.
The last time a third party won an electoral vote was in 1968. For the almost 200 years prior to that, 3-way elections occurred regularly, about once every five election cycles.

Here are the election maps laid out side-by-side. Notice how close the last six elections have been by historical standards. Hard to imagine how any candidate today could flip enough voters from the other party to have a victory like Reagan in 1984.

Presidential Election Results 1789-2012

One of the clearest things that jumps out when you look at the maps is how recent the red state / blue state phenomenon is. As recently as Jimmy Carter’s win in 1976, the south went Democrat and the west voted Republican.

My favorite sequence, unimaginable today, is between 1956 and 1964 when almost every state flips parties, all the Democrats becoming Goldwater Republicans. Four years later in 1968, Nixon runs and everyone flips back. Finally, the whole country unites to reelect Nixon in 1972 (and to impeach him in 1974).

Historically, the bluest state in the country is Georgia. The reddest state is Vermont.

Georgia has voted Democrat 32 times vs Republican 9 times. Vermont has voted Republican 33 times vs Democrat 7 times, only 1 of which was before 1992.

Hover over the map to see how many times a state has voted for each party.

Static image

Election 2016 is off to an interesting start. Could a Trump / Sanders shakeup change the political landscape for the better? Or are they more likely to polarize the Country even more?

Sources:

Election results are from the National Archives (you can also download my cleaned-up version of the data here)
Programmed using D3 + Mike Bostock’s label wrapping code

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Max Galka

I am an NYC-based entrepreneur (my newest project: Blueshift). I'm fascinated by data visualization and the ways that data is transforming our understanding of the world. I spend a lot of time with my face buried in Excel, and when I find something interesting I write about it here and as a contributor for the Huffington Post (more about my background).
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tylerc

Never realized there were so many different political parties. The best one:

“Anti-Masons were opponents of Freemasonry, believing that it was a corrupt and elitist secret society which was ruling much of the country in defiance of republican principles”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Masonic_Party
- http://metrocosm.com/author/mgalka/ Max Galka
  
  Ha! They managed to win Vermont in 1832.
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Merimeter

It’s become a question of which party you least detest
Matthew

This is rather inaccurate since parties didn’t shift over to current affiliations until the civil rights movement but that started with FDR. Georgia is the most blue because it voted for Democrats who supported the plantains of centuries ago. Comparing such to reformers like FDR is a travesty.
- Daniel
  
  That is true. Georgia being the ‘bluest’ has no basis in reality when the parties have switched.
- emil
  
  Don’t think the author is claiming that Georgia is the most liberal state, only that it has voted Democrat the most times. In fact, he pretty explicitly says that the red-blue state phenomenon is new. Outside of GA, VT, and a few others, most states have historically gone back and forth.
- Jack
  
  I had no idea Democrats had such affinities for oversized bananas back in the day. Huh, TIL.
Peter

Interesting the leftist socialist hippie state of VT shows up in the historical map as solidly red
Lex

Back when everyone was a conspiracy theorist… eyeroll
Five Smokes

Every state should be a red state. We can’t afford to have any more Moooslum presidents.
John Titus

And Georgia is a garbage pit. No peaches left..
Talbot

Red state vs. Blue state is media bs.

Republicans should be blue. Red is for commies.
- Switzerland
  
  you know it was planned that way.
- Jeffrey Montgomery
  
  You can thank the 2000 results for that…
matthewkmiller

The county map is much more telling.
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Phil

With all the ideological changes over the past century, I wonder why the Dakota-Kansas strip has voted Republican every time but the Democratic landslides.
- http://metrocosm.com Max Galka
  
  Good observation. I think it must be due to their brand of conservatism — much more focused on small government than on social issues. The two parties flipped on socially issues during the civil rights movement. They flipped on economic issues long before that, I think sometime around FDR and the New Deal.
Danygalw

I’d say Alaska and Hawaii are reddest & bluest, proportionally.