Which website has a great archive of historical electoral maps?”
Maps of the 2008 US presidential election results (Maps for the 2004 election are available here) Election results by state Most of us are, by now, familiar with the maps the TV channels and web sites use to show the results of the presidential election: Click on any of the maps for a larger picture The states are colored red or blue to indicate whether a majority of their voters voted for the Republican candidate, John McCain, or the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, respectively. Looking at this map it gives the impression that the Republicans won the election handily, since there is rather more red on the map than there is blue. In fact, however, the reverse is true – the Democrats won by a substantial margin. The explanation for this apparent paradox, as pointed out by many people, is that the map fails to take account of the population distribution. It fails to allow for the fact that the population of the red states is on average significantly lower than that of the blue ones.
The Collins Maps Blog points to two major collections of aerial photography that are browsable online: the National Library of Scotland’s collection of Ordnance Survey air photo mosaics of Scotland, taken between 1944 and 1950; and the National Collection of Aerial Photography, which includes wartime aerial reconnaissance photos. Recent updates to Google Earth include higher-resolution underwater terrain data for some parts of the ocean floor and historical aerial photography taken over European cities during the Second World War Kottke notices that New York City’s mapping portal has aerial photos of the city from 1924. Deroy Peraza has some fun comparing them to aerial photos from the present day. Previously: NYCityMap.Here are two animated historical timelines that map geopolitical change over time. This one from the British National Archives, which maps the 20th century, proceeds by period; it gets a few colours wrong here and there, and I’m not sure that occupations are represented
