Election time is the busiest time for many journalists, as it was for me. Covering Long Island implies covering two very different counties– Different by races, process of ballot collection, and hence, the format of the election results. On election night, as we watched beautiful maps emerge from NYC’s mayoral race, we waited in agony for results to be released from Nassau and Suffolk Counties.
Suffolk recently updated their Board of Elections website, and for the first time in nearly three years of covering Long Island elections, the results from the previous day’s race were up and ready for download in the a.m. By afternoon, I had the data parsed and mapped.
Nassau still hadn’t confirmed some of their local races. It took a whole extra day to receive Nassau’s election results by race and district, in mangled raw ASCII format no less. Here’s the finished map we published on Newsday!
Redistricting- the politics of maps
On many ballots this November, and sprawled on the front pages of newspapers, was a topic most people thought they would only need to bother with once every decade– redistricting.
Context: If you’re from the U.S., chances are the election district you live in gets pulled and plopped into different state and congressional districts every 10 years. With the largely valid assumption that populations shift, redistricting is intended to balance resources better among districts and equalize the population administratively and electorally.
Tip: When dealing with shapefiles, it is safest to obtain the latest version of administrative district files to account for redistricting. You can assume, though, that precinct-level or election district shapefiles are largely the same year-over-year.
However, redistricting has been political since its inception and gerrymandering, the altering of districts to intentionally dilute Black and Brown votes, is often a byproduct. The Supreme Court is set to determine early 2026 if Louisiana’s redistricting map from 2024 that birthed two-majority Black Congressional districts is valid.
This November, Californians overwhelmingly voted to allow for an un-independent redistricting of the state to counter gerrymandering in other states. Last week, a district court in Texas halted the state from using a new map in the 2026 elections that would have secured an additional Republican house seat. The map was marked unconstitutional, with the court claiming it sorted voters based on race. Texas lawmakers are currently urging the Supreme Court to review the case.
Thanks for reading Murky spaces! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Mapping redistricting
To map what a district boundary looked like before and after largely requires layering two boundary files or creating two distinct maps. Here’s some featured redistricting maps that are at the top of my list:
With a seamless pair of parallel maps, LA Times nailed a version that is both user-friendly and aesthetic. Readers have a hard time holding two images in their heads, so this map handles that perfectly.
This recent interactive map on gerrymandering in Texas’ new maps hand-holds readers through a scrolly, an important element given the context is in the numbers. At any given scrolly point, the map holds three data points: race, urbanness and ruralness, and the district boundaries in question.
Toolkit
Redistricting is not often the focus of the map, especially with election analysis. But when it is, here are some important pointers to remember:
Clarify in your story why the map isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison.:
A simple note at the bottom of the graphic or in the text providing redistricting context will spare you the effort of answering emails from a sharp reader who caught on to it too.
Stick to the common denominator, i.e. election districts:
Focusing on neighborhood-based results for year-over-year comparisons helps omit the need for contextualizing the redistricting. After all, EDs don’t change frequently. Readers have an easier time grasping how Upper East Side voted over the years rather than how Congressional District 12 voted.
Keeping colors and line styles clean and minimum:
One redistricting map online had distinct colors for 13 separate districts, and two parallel maps to show a before and after, leaving much for the reader to decipher. The LA Times map above is a good example of a clean design.
Thanks for reading Murky spaces! This post is public so feel free to share it.
