Politics and Elections Blog
Trends, tools and news from the Google Politics & Elections team
Color inside the lines: New Congressional districts map
Monday, May 21, 2012
The lengthy and tense redistricting process is finally wrapping up, but anyone wanting a national map of congressional districts faces the tedious task of compiling them from each state — until now! We’re excited to share this year’s U.S. Congressional districts in
a single place
.
Our friends at
Azavea
have worked hard to track and compile this data from every state, and they graciously agreed to share this product of their
Cicero API
to be freely used by media, campaigns, and anyone else who has use for it.
(click to enlarge)
Why is this data so hard to come by, and why did it take until now to get it? Well, the
US Constitution
requires rebalancing representation between the states based on population shifts, making each district within a state just about equal in population. However, each state determines how to draw new district lines. To cut a long story short, each of the 43 states with at least two Representatives uses its
own process and timeline
to draw and approve the lines.
This dataset
features the lines for the 2012 elections. You’ll note missing data for Kansas: the lines haven’t finalized there yet, and we’ll add that data once it’s available. Also, in several states there are
ongoing court challenges
- should a court order a review or a change of district lines, we’ll work to reflect those changes.
With several months to go until the general election, we hope that that members of the media, developers, and others trying to understand, explain, and advocate in this political cycle, can make good use of this data.
Posted by Jesse Friedman, Google Politics & Elections Team
Tracking the French Presidential Election Results with Google Maps & Fusion Tables
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Last Sunday, France went to the polls for the second round of its Presidential Elections. François Hollande, the socialist leader, won the race for the French presidency with just under 52% of the votes beating the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy.
As we did for the first round two weeks ago, our
results map
displayed the results in real time. We used Google
Fusion Tables
to store the raw results data for France's 30,000+ communes/towns and 100+ departments.
We updated our Fusion Tables in real-time alongside our map, feel free to dig into the tables to create your own visualizations and tools.
Round 1 Tables: By
Department
and
Commune
Round 2 Tables: By
Department
and
Commune
You can also take a look at the official data from the
French Ministry of the Interior here
.
Posted by Steven Samorodin, Google Politics & Elections Team
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