Mapping the Democrat Swing

Before the U.S. Presidential election most pollsters were predicting a sizeable swing towards the Democrats. Although Biden looks to have won the Presidency it is clear that there was no huge blue wave in this election.

The Washington Post has released a really interesting animated map which visualizes where in the country the vote swung to the left and where it swung to the right. The Post's The Political Winds in the U.S. are Swirling uses animated flow lines to show the swing in the votes in this election.  Using animated flow lines (as made popular by animated wind maps such as earth::) the Post visualizes the change in the vote margin across the United States.

The areas which saw the biggest blue swings are found in medium sized cities and suburbs. The biggest red swings are in the southern most points of the country, in the southern tip of Texas and southern Florida.

You can also see this big swing towards Trump in southern Texas and Florida on the New York Time's 'Shift from 2016' map. The New York Times's Presidential Election Results 2020 includes a swing map which shows where votes have swung left and right since the 2016 election. 

The Times map also shows a huge swing to the Republican candidate in Utah, which doesn't seem to appear on the Post's map. The swings towards Trump in these areas are much bigger than the swings towards Biden in other areas of the country. However Biden has managed to pick up enough smaller swings across the whole country (particularly in suburbs and cities) to apparently win the Presidency.