How to create an election map in R
If you’re mapping election results of, say, the US presidential election by state, it can make sense to just show one color of red for states won by Republicans, and one color of blue for states won by Democrats. That’s because it doesn’t matter whether a candidate wins by three thousand votes or three million: It’s “winner take all.”
But when analyzing results of a state election by county, or a city-wide election by precinct, the margin matters. It’s the overall total that decides the winner. Winning “Atlanta” itself isn’t all you need to know when looking at Georgia statewide results for governor, for example. You’d want to know how many votes the Democrat won by, and compare that to other areas.