Both Parties Got More Votes This Year: That’s a Challenge for Visualizing Results

Often, visualizations about election data focus on the margin of victory (the gap between a winner and loser) and share (what percent of the electorate a candidate captured).

But 2020 was a very high turnout election. And such elections create some quirks in how we visualize election results.

Preliminary turnout estimate from 11/4. We can’t compare modern turnout 1:1 to pre-Civil Rights Era turnout due to extensive voter disenfranchisement and suppression, some of which is unfortunately still with us.