Art, Maps, Maps and Data, Portfolio

Weaponized Counties – 2016 US Election Sculpture

This pair of sculptures divides US counties into two sets: those in which Donald Trump won a majority of the 2016 US presidential election votes and those in which Hillary Clinton won a majority. Clinton assembled powerful urban centers to build her political base, with solid margins in most dense cities. Donald Trump, on the other hand, amassed a vast rural expanse of the less populated counties in the country. These counties were weaponized in the fight for the presidency, and this narrative of urban vs rural is visualized here in sharp, violent imagery, meant to evoke futuristic weapons turned on each other.

The counties are represented as their geographic shapes, with a thickness representing the number of votes the majority candidate received in each county. Counties are arranged along an x-axis from left to right, symbolizing the percentage of the county that voted for the left (Clinton) vs the right (Trump). The counties are rotated at random, melding with one another into a cutting, dangerous form. By comparing this visualization technique across both candidates we can see a stark difference in the makeup of the electorate.

Clinton Majority Counties

Trump Majority Counties

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Art, Maps, Maps and Data, Portfolio

Bridged Counties – 2016 US Election Sculpture

This sculpture takes the US counties and plots them left to right based on how polarized the votes were for one candidate or another in the 2016 US presidential election. Clinton landslide counties to the left, Trump landslide counties to the right. Then the counties are stacked one on the other to build up each candidate’s most polarized base. The height of each county is the # of votes for the candidate that won the majority of the county. These are the safe divided pillars on which each candidate builds their campaign. The two pillars meet in the middle, where the counties had an approximately equal split between the two parties.

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