Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections is a website that provides tables, infographs, and

map A map is a symbolic depiction of interrelationships, commonly spatial, between things within a space. A map may be annotated with text and graphics. Like any graphic, a map may be fixed to paper or other durable media, or may be displayed on ...

s for presidential (1789–present), senatorial (1990 and onwards), and gubernatorial (1990 and onwards) elections. Data include candidates,

political parties A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular area's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific ideological or p ...

, popular and electoral vote totals, and

voter turnout In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate (often defined as those who cast a ballot) of a given election. This is typically either the percentage of Voter registration, registered voters, Suffrage, eligible voters, or all Voti ...

. U.S. county-level data is available for many years, and all data are compiled from official sources. The website has been positively received, and has been used as an authoritative reference by numerous publications.

History

The website was created in 1993 by electrical engineer David Leip from

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

. Leip began the Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections as a hobby after the 1992 U.S. presidential election while he was attending graduate school at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

. It provides data and maps for presidential, congressional, and gubernatorial elections. Despite the general media coloring Democrats as blue and Republicans as red ( blue and red states), the Atlas website follows international conventions and uses

blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB color model, RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB color model, RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between Violet (color), violet and cyan on the optical spe ...

for the more right-leaning Republicans and red for the more left-leaning Democrats. This is because the website predates the conventional color scheme, which has only been in place since the 2000 U.S. presidential election. It also sells election data sets. The website was significantly amended in 1997, beginning with data from the 1996 U.S. presidential election, acquiring information from the secretary of state offices, which published election data online from 1996 onwards. The website was originally hosted by MIT but moved to its own

URL A uniform resource locator (URL), colloquially known as an address on the Web, is a reference to a resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identi ...

(uselectionatlas.org) in 1998. A part of the website is the Atlas Forum, a debate and discussion chamber on U.S. and international elections and politics, as well as electoral

mapmaking Cartography (; from , 'papyrus, sheet of paper, map'; and , 'write') is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality (or an imagined reality) can ...

. In March 2020, the forum was renamed "Talk Elections" with a user and moderator going by the name Virginia becoming the forum administrator.

Reception

PolitiFact PolitiFact.com is an American nonprofit project operated by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, with offices there and in Washington, D.C. It began in 2007 as a project of the ''Tampa Bay Times'' (then the ''St. Petersburg Times ...

has referred the website as "indispensable", while ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

'' has described it as "great-if-not-super-modern", and observed that "perhaps more interestingly, it lets us figure out which voters actually mattered — that is, the votes cast before and after a candidate clinched the nomination." Leip's Atlas has been cited as a "preferred source for election results" by statistician and political pundit

Nate Silver Nathaniel Read Silver (born January 13, 1978) is an American statistician, political analyst, author, sports gambler, and poker player who Sabermetrics, analyzes baseball, basketball and Psephology, elections. He is the founder of ''FiveThirty ...

. The website has been cited or used a reference for U.S. election and political data by major media outlets including ''

The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher based in Washington, D.C. It features articles on politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 185 ...

'',

CBS News CBS News is the news division of the American television and radio broadcaster CBS. It is headquartered in New York City. CBS News television programs include ''CBS Evening News'', ''CBS Mornings'', news magazine programs ''CBS News Sunday Morn ...

, ''

Men's Health ''Men's Health'' (''MH''), published by Hearst Communications, Hearst, is the world's largest men's magazine brand, with 35 editions in 59 countries; it is the bestselling men's magazine on American newsstands. Started as a men's health magazin ...

'', ''

Politico ''Politico'' (stylized in all caps), known originally as ''The Politico'', is an American political digital newspaper company founded by American banker and media executive Robert Allbritton in 2007. It covers politics and policy in the Unit ...

'', '' Roll Call'', '' U.S. News & World Report'', and ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...

''.

References

External links

* {{official website, uselectionatlas.org American political websites Electoral geography of the United States Political history of the United States Presidential elections in the United States