Chris Kirkwood

Political Cartographer, Ph. D. Student

Featured Maps

One of my favorite election results of 2018 was Democrats winning North Carolina's 119th House District. The seat contains some of my favorite places to travel in the state, including Pisgah National Forest and Shining Rock. Rep. Joe Sam Queen won by just over 4.5 points, sweeping Jackson County, winning the Haywood portion by a decent amount, and not getting blown out of the water in Swain

Ohio recently voted on Issue 1, which would have raised the threshold to pass constitutional amendments to 60% (in anticipation of a pro-choice referendum). In Hamilton County, home to Cincinnati, this failed by a 2/3 margin. The city proper and more educated suburbs came out hard against Issue 1, with only the west of the county and a few wealthy/conservative enclaves favoring it

Kentucky SD 28 saw a special election with a 3-way race on the 2023 primary election day. Elkins was ultimately elected by a plurality, losing votes to Henderson (a former conservative Democrat who had wanted the Republican nomination) in the east, and getting trounced by Sainte in Lexington

The Cincinnati metro area is among the more conservative in the country. Trump won the region by about 11 points, only losing Hamilton County OH. Despite the size of this win, Republican lost decent ground in all of Hamilton's collar counties, especially on the Northeastern end of Cincinnati

This map was one of the first that I created using QGIS. The referendum asked voters if they would like to approve restrictions on the use of traps, poison, and hunting dogs against bears. Voters in the more inland and rural parts of the state were more against these measures, while voters along the more urbanized coast were more in favor of them. The measure ended up failing by just under a 7-point margin. Notably, the interior of the state has a higher concentration of bears than the coast

Knox County, Tennessee is where one of my PhD cohort members is from. Biden decidedly improved on Hillary Clinton's margin here from 2016, as she was unable to crack 40% of the vote. Biden made Knoxille a decent amount bluer, and its suburbs a lighter shade of red. Notably, former pro-wrestler Kane is the County Mayor here

In 2022, Kansas Republicans saw their ballot measure to ban abortion fail significantly. Wichita, one of the more typically conservative areas of the state, went pro-choice by about 24 points, and fueled a decent amount of the statewide margin. The pro-life areas were concentrated on the outskirts of town.

Being from the OH/KY/IN Tri-State area, I was curious what the 2020 election looked like in the border counties. Biden won the trio thanks to winning huge in Hamilton OH. The Dearborn IN and Boone KY part of the region went for Republicans by huge numbers

Due to lack of 2020 data, the Boone County precinct data was simulated using uniform shift

In 2022, Cherokee County flipped Republican gubernatorially, but Republicans were still down a lot of ground from federal races. Talequah, which normally has one blue precinct, and its surrounding area turned a bright shade of blue, holding Stitt to just over a 1-point win margin

2008 was the last real peak for Iowa Democrats. Barack Obama won the state by almost 10 points, sweeping a majority of counties in the state, and only doing particularly poorly in the Dutch-dominant northwest. Senator Tom Harkin won on the same ballot, and Democrats won 3/5 Congressional seats (although Obama carried 4)

Douglas County, Nebraska is home to a plethora of competitive elections. In the 2022 Congressional race there, Republican Rep. Don Bacon won 4/7 of Omaha's Council Districts, as well as the outer portions of the county, whereas Democrat Tony Vargas only won 3 despite only a narrow loss of the county

Oneida County NY is home to Rome and Utica, and is home to a few colleges and universities. While it has swung to the left, Trump still won it by almost 16 points. The cities of Utica and Kirkland provided Biden with the largest concentrations of his votes. For a Democrat to win the county, they would likely need to win the southern half of the county, as well as Rome

Polk County IA is the county that Democrats really need to run up the numbers in to win IA-03. In 2022, Cindy Axne managed to post an almost 14-point win of the county, including huge margins in the Des Moines proper, but that wasn't enough to offset the deep red rural areas of the district. In all likelihood, the next Democratic nominee will also have to win next-door Dallas County as well, while not slipping in Polk

Jackson County IL is home to Carbondale (which is home to SIU) and Murphysboro, and is the one light blue dot in southern Illinois. Biden won it by just over a point, with the heavily Democratic margins from the city of Carbondale pushing him over the finish line in the county

The Alaskan Panhandle is one of the more Democratic parts of the state, and is home to the state capital of Juneau. Biden carried these election regions by almost 12 points, but did comparatively poorly near the southern half of the district near Thorne Bay and Ketchikan

In 2019, Forrest County MS almost voted Democratic in the gubernatorial race. Unpopular then-Lt. Governor Tate Reeves ultimately defeated AG Jim Hood, but his margins dropped off significantly across the state. Hood ran up the margins in Hattiesburg, and his efforts paved the way for Brandon Pressley to carry the county 3 years later in his much more narrow defeat

Desha County AR is one of the counties most likely to flip to Trump in 2024. Democratic margins have been dropping significantly years, and Biden only managed to win it by 2.5 points in 2020. Republicans won the county in the 2018 and 2022 midterm elections, so there is definitely established precedent for a flip