Kevin Quealy :

…no one was really super thrilled with maps as the main conduit for the analysis. Instead, they decided on minimizing the geography and using “bins” for states. (Shan has sort of been obsessed with “bins” since 2008, when his dream of having states magically fall into buckets on election night ultimately didn’t pan out. I personally had to cheer him up after that and it was not pretty.)

Here is another great reminder for map-happy news nerds that sometimes the important patterns of a story are not really geographic in a way that is best conveyed through a choropleth or proportional symbol map. This graphic is brilliant and the process behind it is well worth your time.

(via drewvigal)