As some of you know, I have been creating vote-adjusted electoral maps of the United States since the election of 2000. You can see some of them at my other LJ, here: http://rhetoretician.livejournal.com/2008/10/
I've decided to do it again this year, but on this LJ, where more people are following me these days. The idea here is that electoral maps that use the actual geography of the US give more apparent importance to acreage than to population, which typically makes Republican candidates look stronger than they actually are. These maps, in which each state's area corresponds to its electoral vote count, give a more realistic visual of the election.
The numbers here are the Nov. 6 projections from Nate Silver's blog, www.fivethirtyeight.com. Nate's data is good and his mathematics are impeccable; in 2008, when I was trying to do my own projections, Nate outclassed me in several states. So I've given up trying to crunch the numbers myself, and simply given pretty pictorial form to results generated by the master.
If we take the green, yellow, and light orange states to be the only ones where there's any serious competition (as we should), then it's very clear where the candidates should focus their efforts. Obama's current advantage is also clear, but so are his points of vulnerability.
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Kenneth Schneyer 
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