Continuing our gerrymandering series after a long layoff, with another state with two Congressional Districts:
Most of New Hampshire’s population is concentrated in the southern part of the state, so it makes sense that one fair district would include the south and one would include the rest of the state.
Eleven states fixed, thirty-nine to go.
Previous entries:
Introduction
Idaho
Montana
Rhode Island
West Virginia
Over the next few months, you’ll hear a lot about the proposed new Congressional Districts in Florida. You’ve probably seen a map of the proposed new districts, and it probably looks like this (red districts will likely vote Republican, blue districts will likely vote Democratic):
Which is to say, it doesn’t look like Florida at all. The Keys are now a giant peninsula? Tampa Bay disappeared? I know I can do better.
Governor Ron DeSantis’s office designed new districts with the explicit goal of electing more Republican U.S. Representatives. DeSantis signed the new districts into law last Monday, although the new districts have already been challenged in court. If the courts allow, the new districts will be used in the 2026 House election.
And so, I did. I can explain in a lot more detail if you are interested, but basically I trimmed the edges of this map with the coast of Florida, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau Shapefiles. And here is the result, which actually looks like a map of Florida:
If you’re interested, I can produce larger version, a version with districts labeled, or any other changes you can imagine. Email me if you’d like to see it.
This is a good map of Florida, and an accurate representation of the new districts. While it’s an accurate representation, it’s not a fair representation. Becuase, say it with me: LAND DOESN’T VOTE! PEOPLE VOTE!
A fair representation would show each district the same size, because each district gets one voting representative in the House of Representatives. I have been proudly making those maps for years now, and the same approach can make a fair map of Florida’s proposed new districts:
It’s still a massive Republican majority (20-4 based on 2024 election results), but at least the Democratic districts don’t look so pathetically small.
So which representation is the best? Definitely not the one you’ve seen in the media, which yeets Tampa Bay. The map that looks like Florida, with accurate coastlines, accurately shows where in Florida votes come from. The map of equal-sized districts, accurately shows who represents Florida in the House of Representatives. As always, the answer depends on the research question!
Want to try it yourself? Download the scripts and Illustrator files from my GitHub repository! If you want to make the plots yourself, sign up for an account on SciServer.org, create a container, and upload the Ipython file. Happy mapping!
Sarajevo, 1984. The Winter Olympics. The glamour event, as always, is the women’s individual figure skating competition. One of the gold medal favorites was Rosalynn Sumners of the United States. As they often do, American TV network ABC airs a profile of her. And here, in part, is what they said about her – and what she said about herself:
Is it any wonder that so many figure skaters and gymnasts at the time ended up with eating disorders?
I don’t blame Sumners, who won the silver medal at the event and went on to a successful career as a skating coach. I blame society’s expectations of young women at the time.
These weight-focused profiles are a thing of the past today. There is no question that the situation for young women in 2026 is better than it was in 1984. But how much better is it, really?
Every election, conservatives struggle to understand the simplest, most fundamental principle of our Democracy: Land doesn’t vote, People vote. And so it was again with the 2025 Virginia Governor election. Threads user stvo0311 posted this map with the caption “Tell me that Virgina wanted a Dem as Governor. These elections need to be scrutinized more”:
The map shows Virginia’s 95 counties and 38 independent cities. Red represents Republican candidate Winsome Earle-Sears and blue represents Democratic candidate Abigail Spanberger. Sure, this map gives the visual impression that Virginia wanted a Republican governor. But remember: Land doesn’t vote, people vote.
What would happen if you followed the “people vote” principle and scaled the map so that the area of each county was not determined by its land area, but by the number of people who voted? Here is what the map looks like:
This kind of map, where size is determined not by real-life size but by population or some other variable, is called a “cartogram.” It is a much fairer representation of what voters want for the Governor of Virginia.
It’s not perfect – remember that counties don’t vote, people vote. The map is all-or-nothing, ignoring all votes for Earle-Sears in blue counties and all votes for Spanberger in red counties. Elections are all or nothing, but they are all or nothing at the state level, not the county level. A better representation would show counties in shades of purple corresponding to the percent vote for either candidate. And I might make that map someday. (Also, the counties are not in their true positions – I just moved them around in an effort to make the graph look roughly like Virginia.)
But this map gives a clear answer to the question “Did Virginia voters want to elect a Democratic governor?” And the answer is Hell Yes.
How did I do it? See the code I ran to generate the map. The code outputs an .svg file. The file has many counties overlapping, so I used Adobe Illustrator to move the counties around until they were all visible.
Want to do it yourself? Create an account on SciServer, the science platform that allows you to upload, analyze, and visualize data in a web browser (and which is my day job). Email me your username and I’ll help you access the data. You can get the code from my election cartograms GitHub repository.
I’m fascinated by stories of weird folk heroes, and here’s a good one! Who is the person commemorated in the photo below?
In 1718, Count Charles III Phillip of Heidelberg visited the city of Salurn in the Principality of Tyrol, in what is now northern Italy. There he met a button maker named Giovanni Clementi. Clementi was a dwarf (what today might be called a little person), at a time when hiring dwarves as court jesters was big business. And he knew a business opportunity when he saw one: court jestering pays much better than button making. So when Charles invited him to come to Heidelberg, Clementi said yes.
Charles had another job in mind: Heidelberg Castle held the world’s largest wine barrel – the largest then, and the largest still today, 300 years later. Photo below, taken by me on a visit to Heidelberg. Charles gave Clementi the key to the barrel – and with it, a new identity.
The sight of a dwarf three feet high holding the keys to a wine barrel thirty feet high was wildly entertaining to people all over the city and surrounding lands. Clementi loved the fame, and loved the wine. When someone asked him if he wanted a glass of wine, he would respond in Italian, “perché no?,” meaning “why not?” The citizens of Heidelberg heard is as “Perkeo,” and a nickname was born. Italian button maker Giovanni Clementi became German court jester Perkeo, and a legend was born.
Perkeo stayed in Heidelberg the rest of his life, developing a reputation for his love of wine. On his deathbed, he asked for a glass of wine. A servant brought a glass of water instead. Perkeo took a sip and immediately died.