Well, Bush won the election.
Ohio would’ve been the state they’d have fought about this time, but it doesn’t matter. I imagined that Kerry would hold out his concession for a long time. People were of course screaming for all the votes to be counted, and I agree. But at some point, the maths just wasn’t going to be there.
What I really didn’t understand, despite many of our news programmes desperately trying to explain, was the whole electoral voting system. This is pretty much the system where each state works out who’s got the most votes and “pledge” to vote for who they’ve chosen, with the most densely populated states getting more votes. I think California for instance gets 55 votes, whereas Maine gets 3 (maybe). Who knows?
This leads to maps of states where everywhere is pretty much Bush red with Kerry blue down the sides. However, America is not red or blue as many of the news programmes seem to think. It is clearly, obviously, just shades of purple. Not right, not left, all in the middle, with a twist of red or a twist of blue. This is really eye-opening, and a brilliant act of visualization and programming. Enjoy this election map, in shades of purple, by county, not state. Brilliant.
