In the United States, political maps are typically represented as polygons red or blue – be they states, counties, or legislative districts: It’s first-past-the-post, and a plurality decides the winner.
This species of analysis is called a choropleth map, a thematic color scheme that summarizes the attributes of the underlying data and, in the case of those you see on TV and the internet, who won a given race. For that purpose it’s fine — but too often, larger inferences seem to be made about geographies from those maps. If we look a bit closer at our county, maybe we can pull ourselves away a bit from the political partitioning with which we are currently inundated.
Let’s examine the voting precincts of our county and the results of the 2020 gubernatorial race between Democrat Mike Cooney, Republican Greg Gianforte, and Libertarian Lyman Bishop. (It’s worth noting that since that race, Montana has gone through a redistricting effort, so the precinct boundaries on these maps are now out of date.)
