November 12, 2022

In the one course I taught at the College of New Jersey (TCNJ), "Africa and the West," I took advantage of a terrific exhibit the college's library was curating that semester on critical cartography to schedule a class visit and have my students do an assignment on maps. (I've forgotten the details of the assignment, but I'm sure it was bloody brilliant.) The contrast between the two maps below is a great example of why thinking critically about cartography is important: they present the same information, but the way each does so skews our interpretation of that information. The first map suggests that the country is overwhelmingly Republican with little oases of Dems. But since people, not land, vote, the second map is a more accurate representation of the national electorate. The first map does, however, underscore why Republicans have structural advantages in the U.S. Senate (since they are the majority party in many low-population states).