Resource of the Week
By Shirl Kennedy, Deputy Editor

OK…as far as seasons go, I much prefer baseball season to election season. But nothing good can come from playing ostrich when political leadership is at stake. We have a cool resource to show you this week — but it has one small flaw you might not notice unless you live in my overpopulated part of west central Florida.

Elections 2006–Interactive Map
Source: Congressional Quarterly (CQ)
CQ 2006 Election Forecast Map
Generally speaking, interactive maps are A Good Thing. Usually, they are pretty straightforward — e.g., no complicated user interface that makes you scratch your head. What you see is pretty much what you get here; when you first click on the link above, you see a map of the United States broken down by congressional district. Each district is color-coded by political leaning: Safe Republican, Republican Favored, Leans Republican, No Clear Favorite, Leans Democrat, Democrat Favored, Safe Democrat. Note the two tabs at the upper right. When you first arrive at the page, you are looking at the “Projected Landscape” of the House of Representatives after the fall elections. If you click on the “Current Landscape” tab, you can view a map of the existing House political situation — seats held by Republicans, Democrats, Independents and vacant seats. That’s the static part of the map.

The interactive part happens when you click on a congressional district. Up comes a page describing that district in terms of geography, demographics, election history, workforce make-up and educational attainment. At the top, you see the name of the incumbent, his or her status (e.g., “Running for Re-election”), and CQ’s election 2006 forecast (e.g., “Safe” Republican or Democrat, “Leans” Republican or Democrat, “No Clear Favorite”). The data sources are the 2000 U.S. Census — which is worrisome because of its age at this point, especially in fast-growing parts of the country — and CQ’s Politics in America, a standard reference resource. The most current edition available is CQ’s Politics in America 2006: The 109th Congress, which has a date of May 2005. This page also provides you with some news headline links to news stories about politics in that particular state.

To the right of the news headlines, you’ll see a “Back” link and an X in a box. Clicking on either of these will take you back to the map. At first, I didn’t notice this because the type is light gray. Instead, I used the browser’s back button to try and get back to the map, but was routed instead to the CQ Politics home page, which looks like a fairly interesting weblog (and has an RSS feed), but it’s not where I expected to go.

Note that there is a slider to the right of the map which allows you to zoom in or out. Because I live in a geographically small congressional district in the Tampa Bay area, which is quite densely populated, I wanted to enlarge the map to see the district divisions more clearly so I could click on the right one. Alas, when I enlarged the map, my part of Florida slipped behind the House “Balance of Power Scorecard” at the lower right. Fortunately, at the top of the slider, are four arrowheads which allow you to move the map to the left or right, or up or down…but I could only go so far down before the Florida peninsula got truncated. So I had to mess with things a little before I could pinpoint my own congressional district.

If you live in a state like Montana, Wyoming, or either of the Dakotas, however, clicking your congressional district is a lot easier because there is only one in each state. Note that it’s a lot less complicated when you leave the House view and choose either the Senate or Governors tabs at the upper left, since every state has just two senators and one governor.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 25th, 2006 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.