Newsweek used misleading county-by-county map to declare "A Red-Letter Day"

Newsweek magazine featured a county-by-county map of the November 2 presidential election results that deceptively overstated President George W. Bush's margin of victory over Senator John Kerry. The map, which was featured in the November 15 edition of the magazine, appeared under the headline "A Red-Letter Day."

The county-by-county map is misleading, as Media Matters for America noted when several conservative pundits previously highlighted it. While the overwhelming majority of U.S. counties are Republican, those counties that voted Democratic are generally more densely populated. The county-by-county map, therefore, visually overstates the Republican share of the vote.

Princeton University professor Robert J. Vanderbei created a map that more accurately depicts voter preference in the 2004 presidential election. Rather than simply representing a county's voter preference with red (Republican) or blue (Democrat), Vanderbei's map takes into account the percentage of the Democratic and Republican vote in each county, therefore using shades of purple to represent closely contested counties. On November 9, Vanderbei's map was the "click of the day" on Newsweek's website -- despite this, the map was not included in the magazine's print edition.

As MMFA noted when FOX News Channel host Bill O'Reilly used the electoral map to exaggerate the strength of Bush's victory, that map also visually overstates the Republican share of the vote. Many of the more sparsely populated western states that Bush won cover a large amount of land mass, whereas many of the northeastern states that Kerry won are densely populated but cover a smaller amount of land. In fact, according to 2003 U.S. Census Bureau numbers, the 20 states that Kerry won contain 48 percent of the U.S. population, according to 2003 U.S. Census Bureau numbers. A size-adjusted electoral map of the red and blue states provides a more accurate visual of actual voter preferences.

—A.S.