Wednesday, June 01, 2022

What Matters in the Midterm Elections

In order to find out which issues voters care most about for the upcoming midterms, Axios analyzed which issues were being searched the most on Google in each congressional district. In Midterm elections 2022: The issues that matter to Americans Axios has mapped out the relative and absolute importance of different political issues in each district.

As you can see in the animated screenshot above the Axios map allows you to view the results in both a choropleth and cartogram view. If you select a political issue (by category and topic) you can see how much that issue has been searched in every congressional district. If you select a district on the map you can also view which issues are being searched the most in that district. In the cartogram view each district is shown as the same size which (as Axios says) makes it easier to compare the relative search interest of the selected topic across different districts. 

At the moment jobs and taxes seem to be two of the political issues which are seen as among the most important in nearly every congressional district. However the importance attached by voters to different issues can change over time. To account for this Axios says that the map will be regularly updated during the midterms.

Axios' cartogram view was inspired in part by Le Monde's cartogram map of the 2020 US Presidential Election. Le Monde's US election map represents each electoral college vote in each state at the same size. This cartogram view of the 2020 U.S. election provides an accurate picture of the electoral college votes won by both Biden and Trump across the country. It eradicates the distorted view which is given by a choropleth map of the results, which visually emphasizes the huge rural electoral districts usually won by the Republicans over the smaller but more densely populated electoral districts which tend to vote more Democrat.

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