University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab Releases New, Interactive Map Focused on Voting in Presidential Elections

UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND — As Americans prepare to head the polls in November to elect the next president of the United States, the University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab has released Electing the President, a new, interactive map focusing on voting in presidential elections since 1840.

Electing the President visualizes the results of presidential elections through both the electoral college and the popular vote, from William Henry Harrison's contest with Martin Van Buren in 1840 to Biden vs. Trump in 2020.

Robert K. Nelson, director of the DSL, said that while there are many presidential maps available, Electing the President stands out for two reasons.

“First, it's not just about candidates and parties. It's about voters. The popular vote maps show and allow people to explore more nuanced, detailed voting patterns across the country,” Nelson said. “Second, we go much deeper into history than most other maps, all the way back to 1840 when the Republican Party didn’t exist and the Whigs were one of the two major political parties.”

Electing the President is part of the American Panorama project, an historical atlas of the United States. Additional American Panorama projects include the award-winning Mapping Inequality, which maps the practice of redlining and the history of racial and ethnic discrimination in housing policy across the country, and Photogrammar, which provides tools to explore a rich archive of photographs taken between 1935 and 1944.

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