The Limits of Color-Coding During the last two U.S. presidential
elections, the media devised a catchy system for depicting the
partisan divide among the 50 states. Where a majority of the
votes cast were Republican, the state was called red; where
Democrat, blue. Maps of the nation required just a glance to
show where each party prevailed. The red and blue categories
proved helpful in discussions of the electoral college, which
decided the 2000 election for George W. Bush, although Al Gore
won the popular vote. The red and blue labels worked because in
most instances the winner of the popular election takes all (not
a proportionate number) of each states electoral votes. But the
color-coding has limited usefulness. Complex-ity gets lost. In
some states, voters choose a president from one party and
national legislators from another; are these states red or blue?
Two colors cannot account for other factorslike gender, marital
state, education and income, race and ethnicity, and urban,
suburban or rural residen