The 2024 US Election Maps

The winner of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election is becoming clear, as shown by today's newspaper election maps. Donald Trump has secured two key battleground states, North Carolina and Georgia, and leads over Kamala Harris in several states already called in his favor.

In U.S. elections, traditional choropleth maps - where regions are shaded to represent the winning or leading candidate - can often be misleading. These maps color each state or county based on the majority vote, creating expansive areas of a single color that distort the geographic distribution of voter support. This approach tends to exaggerate the dominance of one party in states with large but sparsely populated regions, while densely populated urban areas, which may vote differently, occupy smaller spaces and are visually minimized.

As a result, choropleth maps can misrepresent the actual balance of voter support, making it challenging for readers to accurately grasp election outcomes. Alternative visualizations, such as cartograms and dot-density maps, offer a more accurate reflection of the electorate by resizing regions or representing individual votes, providing a clearer and more informative view of the political landscape.

For instance the New York Times has used a proportional symbol margin map to illustrate the strength of support for each candidate across counties. In this map, colored circles are “proportional to the amount each county’s leading candidate is ahead,” effectively visualizing the size and distribution of margins.

Additionally, the Times includes a traditional choropleth map (with states colored by the leading candidate) and a "swing map," which visualizes the shift in the margin of votes cast for Democrats and Republicans in each county. On this swing map, if more voters have chosen the Democratic candidate compared to 2020 (in percentage terms), the arrow is colored blue - even if Trump is currently leading in the total percentage of votes (and vice versa for a Republican shift).

The “Shift from 2020” map perhaps provides the clearest picture yet of the 2024 election dynamics. As seen in the provided screenshot, there has been a significant swing toward Trump in a large number of counties that have already been called.

The Washington Post's Presidential Results 2024 offers a cartogram view as an alternative to its traditional choropleth map. In this cartogram, each state is represented by a number of squares, corresponding to its electoral votes. The squares are colored by the leading candidate, and hovering over a state reveals the vote count for each candidate and an estimate of the votes counted.

Your Hour-By-Hour Guide to Election Night

Even though the results of the election may not be known for days, many people will still be glued to the news overnight. If you're one of those who will be tracking every rumor for clues about the outcome of the U.S. Presidential Election, you might want to bookmark these interactive maps from The New York Times and The Washington Post, which show when polls close and when to expect updates from the key battleground states.

The Washington Post's When will we know the election results? includes a helpful map displaying when polls close in every county across the country. The accompanying article also offers predictions on when you can expect results from the seven battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

The New York Times' What Time Do the Polls Close? also provides a mapped visualization of poll closing times by state. The article is divided into half-hour intervals, with maps showing which states' polls will close in each block up to midnight (Central Time).

For the actual 2024 U.S. Presidential Election results maps, check back tomorrow!

Vintage Street View Imagery

Imagine if Google Maps offered a way to view Street View panoramas of cities as they looked in the past. Unfortunately Google only began capturing Street View images in 2006 and 2007. Photography itself, however, was invented in the 19th century, which means we can explore vintage photographs to glimpse our cities as they used to exist.

In fact, one American photographer, Ed Ruscha, practically pioneered Street View photography. In the 1960s he mounted a motorized 35mm camera on top of a pickup truck and drove up and down Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, capturing a unique photographic record of this iconic street. He repeated this project in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. The result is an incredible time capsule, documenting the evolution of Sunset Boulevard across five decades.

Sunset over Sunset presents Ed Ruscha’s photographs of Sunset Boulevard across five decades, stitched into continuous photostrips that capture the changing landscape between Doheny Road and North Alameda Street. Using a strip map of Sunset Boulevard you can browse all five complete historical photostrips of the street from each of the five decades. 

Sunset Over Sunset integrates Ruscha’s images with historical data, such as city directories, census records, and local newspapers. Using the strip map, users can explore specific addresses, and uncover their history through their associated historical data. A 'Stories' section also picks out and explores some of the most interesting urban developments which have taken place on the 'Strip' since the 1960s.

The 12 Sunsets website also allows users to explore Ed Ruscha's photographs of the Sunset Strip overlaid on an interactive map. In this presentation, an interactive map is flanked by Ruscha's vintage photos of each side of Sunset Boulevard. Simply click on a year to change the date of the street-view photos shown on the map, and use the "Flip" button to rotate the page 180 degrees.

Los Angeles isn’t the only city that can be explored through vintage street-view photography; New York City also boasts extensive collections of historical street imagery.

1940s NYC and 80s.NYC are two fantastic interactive maps that let you explore vintage photographs of New York City street scenes. These photos, captured by the New York City Finance Department in the early 1940s and again in the early 1980s, document every building across the city’s five boroughs. Originally taken to assess property values, these images now serve as invaluable time capsules of New York’s urban landscape.

These interactive maps allow you to explore New York’s streets as they appeared in the 1940s and 1980s, giving you the chance to see how your favorite neighborhoods have transformed (or perhaps remained the same) over the past eighty years.

Scrambled Hex Maps

Fresh from creating a mobile friendly update for Scrambled Maps, Tripgeo has now released an even trickier puzzle, called Scrambled Hex Maps.  

If you love puzzles that challenge your spatial reasoning and problem-solving skills, Scramble Hex Maps is a game you won’t want to miss! This engaging daily challenge invites players to rearrange scrambled hexagonal maps into their correct configurations. With its unique twist on the traditional jigsaw puzzle format, Scrambled Hex Maps offers a refreshing and enjoyable way to test your wits and spatial awareness.

The game challenges players to rearrange hexagonal map tiles to reveal the correct order. As you dive into the world of hexagonal scrambled maps, you’ll soon find that the shapes and configurations offer a distinct challenge compared to the original version of Scrambled Maps.

Disclaimer: Having created the original Scrambled Maps I am a little biased. TripGeo is also kind enough to host my other map games Map Snake and Nightmare on View Street, as well as some, like Scrambled Hex Maps and TripGeo Trivia, that were not made by me.

The Interactive Map of Ambridge

The Archers is the world's longest-running drama series and yet it has taken 73 years for someone to finally create an interactive map of Ambridge.

The Archers is a long-running British radio drama, broadcast on BBC Radio 4, that first aired in 1951. This radio soap opera is famously billed by the BBC as "an everyday story of country folk". The series follows the lives of the residents of Ambridge, a fictional rural village in the English Midlands. 

Like many English villages, life in Ambridge revolves around the pub (The Bull), the village green, the community-run shop, and the parish church. The new interactive Ambridge Map, created by the Archers Wiki, is powered by Leaflet.js, allowing listeners to explore and understand the village’s geography.

Currently a work-in-progress, the map notably lacks St. Stephen's Church, though it includes the River Am, which recently featured in the jailing of George Grundy. Absent as well are key farms: Brookfield Farm (owned by the Archers family), Home Farm (owned by the Aldridge family), Bridge Farm, and Grange Farm (run by the Grundy family). Hopefully, markers indicating these essential locations will all be added soon.

Other interactive maps of fictional locations include:

• The Lord of the Rings Project's Map of Middle-Earth
• The Interactive Game of Thrones Map

Map Snake

I'm sure you remember playing the classic game of Snake. This simple yet addictive game required you to maneuver an ever-growing snake while eating pixels and avoiding collisions with the external walls and the snake's own tail. Now, imagine taking that nostalgic gameplay and placing it in the wonderful world of cartography - welcome to Map Snake!

Map Snake takes the cherished arcade experience and enhances it by integrating the gameplay with the interactive maps of major global cities. Now, you must guide your snake through a city landscape, collect markers, and avoid your own tail. This fresh take on a classic game combines the much-loved gameplay of Snake with the unique geography and culture of cities around the world. Get ready to slither your way through an exciting blend of nostalgia and cartography with Map Snake!

I coded Map Snake this morning for the #30DayMapChallenge. Utilizing the powerful MapLibre library, the game animates a linestring on top of OpenFreeMap map tiles. The animated linestring is controlled by keyboard event listeners that follow the player's directions. The game includes a simple collision detection system to determine when the snake interacts with its own tail and utilizes localStorage to keep track of a player's highest score. Each time a new game starts, the map shifts to a random location chosen from an array of seven global cities.

At the moment, the game is very simple, but I have a few ideas for improving the gameplay. For now, I have just one game tip: if your snake moves out of the current map view, don’t panic! Just perform a blind U-turn, and your snake should soon slither back into view.

Cryptic Cross World

My #30DayMapChallenge entry for 'Lines' is a fiendish treasure-hunt map game.

The premise of Cryptic Cross World is simple: you’re presented with a series of cryptic crossword clues, each leading you to a new location as you solve them. Points are awarded based on the distance you travel. To aid you in solving these clues, you can reveal letters in the answer - but beware, revealing letters comes at a cost. The first letter you reveal will deduct 1,000 miles from your score, and each subsequent reveal doubles in cost. So, the second letter will cost 2,000 miles, the third 4,000 miles, and so on.

While the rules of Cryptic Cross World are simple, the game itself is fiendishly hard. For now, there’s a built-in cheat to help players along. If you enter an incorrect answer, a prompt will reveal the correct solution, allowing you to proceed to the next clue.

I think Cryptic Cross World is currently very challenging, especially for those unfamiliar with cryptic crosswords. I have a few ideas to make gameplay slightly less demanding (which I didn’t manage to implement in time for the #30DayMapChallenge). In the future, I’d like to add three "clue" cards to give players additional hints on particularly tough clues. I also plan to introduce a limited number of "skip" cards, allowing players to bypass a clue entirely if it feels impossible to solve.

For now, if you’re stuck, you can simply enter random letters, and a prompt will reveal the correct answer.

Free Map Data Grabbers

The Overture Maps Foundation, founded in 2022 by Microsoft, Meta (formerly Facebook), Amazon, and TomTom, aims to provide accessible, interoperable open map data. 

At the time of its launch I remarked that 'hopefully in the future the Overture Maps Foundation will develop more user-friendly methods to access the data'. The Overture Maps Explorer (Beta) is exactly that. The Explorer allows developers to zoom in on any location in the world and download a GeoJSON file of any combination of 'Land', 'Transportation', 'Buildings', 'Places', or 'Addresses' map data.

Using the Explorer couldn’t be simpler: just center the map on your desired location, select the layers you need, and hit ‘Download Visible.’ Instantly, you’ll receive the selected data for the current map bounds as a GeoJSON file.

Another similar tool is Evan Applegate’s Overture Data Grabber, which also simplifies the process of downloading Overture Maps data. After centering on your area of interest and choosing the desired data, simply draw a polygon around your selection. The Data Grabber then downloads the requested data as a GeoJSON file, ready for use.

To test out the Overture Data Grabber, I used it this morning to map the Brighton Lanes. I downloaded building footprints and place data, then paired it with road polylines from Overpass Turbo. Within minutes, I was able to create an interactive MapLibre map showcasing shops, bars, and restaurants in the Brighton Lanes - which, by lucky coincidence, also happens to qualify as my 'Points' map for the #30DayMapChallenge.

Tranquil Walking Directions

Southampton has launched a new interactive map to help walkers and cyclists avoid air pollution and noisy streets. The new Southampton Airmap guides users to quieter, greener, and cleaner walking and cycling paths throughout the city. It provides routes that bypass busy, polluted streets in favor of tree-lined avenues, quiet parks, and scenic green spaces.

At the heart of the Southampton Airmap website is an interactive map powered by a unique "tranquility index", developed by researchers at the University of Southampton. This tranquility index is a detailed, color-coded map that displays levels of peace across every corner of the city. With a grid of small hexagonal zones, the map highlights the most tranquil spots in varying shades of green - from lighter greens for calmer streets to deep greens for serene areas like parks and quiet neighborhoods. Using this map, you can easily plan a journey along Southampton's most relaxing, nature-filled routes.

Simply enter your starting point and destination, and the Southampton Airmap will suggest a route that reduces exposure to air and noise pollution, guiding you through greener, more peaceful areas. Each suggested route comes with an overall Tranquil City Index rating based on various factors that contribute to a calm, low-stress environment. Users can also click on any location within the city to view that area’s air quality, noise levels, green space presence, and its Tranquil City Index rating.

The Scariest Place Names in the World

For many people around the world, the fun of Halloween starts today with Mischief Night. Whether you’re indulging in a little mischief tonight or getting ready for trick-or-treating tomorrow, you might want to add a little spooky geography to your celebrations. Get ready for a 'Mappy Halloween' with a journey through some of the eeriest place names on the map! From Vampire Island off the coast of Australia to Devil’s Den in Pennsylvania, explore some scary-sounding haunts and spine-chilling towns that give Halloween a whole new dimension of frightful fun.

Mappy Hallloween

Mappy Halloween! is a crowd-sourced map of scary user-contributed place names found around the world. Off the coast of Western Australia you might want to avoid landing on Vampire Island, which apparently is uninhabited (although it may only be uninhabited by mortal beings). Other highlights on this map include a Ghost Lake in Canada, a Spooky Gulch in Utah, and a Wizard Wells in Texas.

If you know of any other spooky sounding locations then you can add them to the map by completing this short form.

The Scariest Place Names in the US

The United States is a very scary country. The Scariest Place Names in the US is an interactive map which plots some of the most frightening sounding locations across America. You've probably already heard of the towns of Hell in Michigan and Tombstone, Arizona. But have you heard of Transylvania, Louisiana and Slaughter Beach, Delaware.

You can find many, many more spooky sounding locations on the Scariest Place Names in the US. On this map thousands of different scary sounding places have been identified using colored map markers. So if you zoom in on your home you should be able to quickly find the scariest sounding locations nearby.

13 Spooky Halloween Haunts

If you are looking for more spooky sounding locations to spend this Halloween then you should consult the 13 Spooky Halloween Haunts interactive map. This map plots the locations of some of America's most frightening place-names. It also explains how these scary places earned their spooky names.

For example there is a Dead Women Crossing in Oklahoma, which was named for the headless corpse of a young schoolteacher who was found there in 1904. If that isn't scary enough for you then why not spend the night at Murder Creek, Alabama, named for the party of loyalists robbed and murdered here during the Revolutionary War.

Haunted Places in France

Haunted Places in France is an interactive mapped tour of some of the scariest place-names in France. Using this map you can plan a tour of France that you might never forget, taking in locations such as Le Puits de Neuf Morts (the Well of Nine Deaths), Le Val Sans Retour (the Valley of No Return), Le Pont du Diable (the Devil's Bridge), Pont des Vampires (the Vampire Bridge) or Les Prés des Squelettes (the Skeleton Meadows).