I really like maps, particularly maps of the United States.

A couple of interesting political maps I saw recently (via Andrew Sullivan, who saw them on Daily Kos) focus on the Democratic nomination race. The first one shows the relative strengths of Obama (in blue), Clinton (in red) and Edwards (in green):



The second one highlights how strong Clinton is in Appalachia. The purple represents counties where she received over 65% of the vote (pre West-Virginia):



In some of my free time, I've been working on putting together an animated map that shows how the telephone area codes have split over the years. It's kind of like this one, except it's in full color. The idea is to show the first area codes in dark colors and newer ones in lighter colors, showing how different parts of the country have "brightened" over time as growth there has fueled the demand for additional area codes. (You can see the first frame of the animation here.)

One of the most exciting things about presidential election night every four years is watching the states change from gray to red or blue as the returns come in. I'm not sure why I enjoy it so much, but I do.

Along those same lines, now that same-sex marriage is legal in California, I wondered what an animated map showing progress in that area might look like. It'll probably be a few years before we'll get to see more than a few frames.

(It looks like Wikipedia's already updated their map to reflect today's news.)