When Donald Trump first took office in 2017, he famously highlighted his election win by sharing maps with expanses of red to showcase Republican victories, particularly in rural America. Despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, his narrow Electoral College victory in 2016 rested on just 78,000 votes across key battleground states. The red-dominated maps Trump displayed emphasised the Republican win but inflated the importance of sparsely populated areas, giving a skewed view of the electorate. By comparison, population-weighted cartograms, which resize regions based on population, offered a more balanced perspective by expanding space for densely populated urban areas, traditionally Democratic-leaning. This approach illustrated the enduring political split between rural, Republican areas and urban, Democratic strongholds – a division evident in both the 2016 and 2020 elections.
The 2024 election, however, offered a different story. Trump’s win this time around was both decisive and unexpected, with polling organisations largely failing to predict the scale of his victory. Election maps, whether conventional or population-weighted, now tell a straightforward narrative of a clear-cut win, rendering some of the regional nuances less critical than in previous years.
Maps play a crucial role in visualising election results and shaping public perception. Traditional geographic maps continue to dominate print and broadcast media because of their simplicity in displaying state-level outcomes. However, online platforms and social media have embraced more innovative mapping techniques, from interactive visualisations to alternative formats like cartograms, to reveal subtler patterns.
US Presidential Election 2024, Results by state
This series of maps presents an early snapshot of the 2024 election, with most states reporting nearly complete vote counts by November 8. Each map provides a different view of the outcome. The conventional map uses colour to indicate state winners but can be misleading by overstating large, sparsely populated areas. The population-weighted cartogram resizes states based on population, highlighting the urban centres that often lean Democratic. Finally, a hexagon cartogram standardises states into hexagonal shapes proportional to their Electoral College votes, delivering a clear representation of the election result.
The population-weighted cartogram further uses colour gradients to depict vote shares across states, with the strongest victories for each candidate prominently marked. Notably, Maine and Nebraska stand out, given their unique system of splitting Electoral College votes. This map underscores growing political polarisation in the US: whereas many states had narrow margins in past elections, 2024 saw Trump win with a vote share of over 55% in 23 states, while Kamala Harris achieved similar dominance in just 13 states. Only 14 states had close contests, with Trump ultimately prevailing in most battleground states that usually determine the outcome of a presidential election in the US.
As county-level data emerges, the polarisation underlying this election will become even more pronounced, illustrating persistent social and political divisions. Despite efforts by Joe Biden during his presidency, these divides remain deep-seated. The implications of Trump’s return to office on this fragmented political landscape are still unfolding.
The hexagon cartogram arguably provides the most straightforward view of the Electoral College outcome, with each state represented by its electoral value and shaded for the winning candidate. This map also highlights states that shifted party allegiance since the 2020 election, offering a concise picture of the electoral majority that will see Trump assume the presidency once more.
This series of maps reveals the power of visualisation in interpreting election results. By approaching the outcome from multiple angles, these maps bring forward insights into voter density, geographic reach, and political power. Together, they reflect the complex contours of American democracy – a landscape defined by both vast geographic expanse and concentrated population centres. As Trump returns to the White House, the 2024 election maps remind us that the dynamics of US politics are anything but a simple divide between red and blue. These maps capture the underlying fabric of a deeply polarised nation, a story that will continue to shape American democracy in the years ahead.
This feature is a modified version of a a contribution for the US Election Analysis 2024 published by the Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture and Community in collaboration with Political Studies Association. The report including the full analysis that these maps were taken from is published online at www.electionanalysis.ws/us.
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