Talk:2016 United States presidential election in North Dakota

Well done (good beginning)

Wow, JP; This is really well-worded and well done! -- Charles Edwin Shipp (talk) 13:49, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Undue weight NPOV violation in filled-area county map

At Talk:United States presidential election in Washington (state), 2016#What information is given by a pie map vs filled area (aka choropleth)? is a detailed table of what's so bad about choropleth (filled-area) maps. What's particular notable about the North Dakota map is the misleading way it draws your eye to Sioux and Rolette counties, for the trivial reason that they are the only ones that Clinton "won". This is yet another example of why calling counties won or lost is a artificial. States are not won by racking up the most counties, and Clinton's majority in these arbitrary divisions means nothing. A county's only importance is how many votes it contributes to the bottom line, and these two contribute very little.

It violates the NPOV policy WP:UNDUE to graphically present these as the most important areas of Clinton's support in North Dakota. These two counties only contributed 2,767 votes to Clinton's total of 93,758, or just under 3%. You need votes to win a state, and for Clinton, the places where she got the most votes are Cass, Burleigh and Grand Forks county. Roulette is Clinton's 7th most important county, and Souix is her 19th, out of 54 counties.

The way the map uses color to emphasize the size of a county, and the size of a candidate's lead, also puts undue weight on what are the least important parts of Trump's win. The large, low-population counties in the state's south and southwest, like Slope, Bowman and Adams, are colored to emphasizes the size of his lead, ignoring the paltry number of votes represented. As with Clinton, the places that gave Trump the bulk of the votes he won the state with are where the people are: Cass, Burleigh, and Grand Forks, with significant support in Ward, Morton, Williams and Stark counties. The colored area map uses light tones on Cass, Burleigh, and Grand Forks counties, making them seem marginal when in fact they were the most important in this election. The policy here isn't just about whether the map favors one side or the other, pro-Clinton or pro-Trump. The policy says "An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject" and this is why the colored map is not neutral. The policy also notes that "This is a concern especially in relation to recent events that may be in the news."

If county maps were all we had, you could excuse this, perhaps, since they are the easiest and most naive way of illustrating an election. But the are not all have, so there is no excuse to violate the WP:UNDUE policy in this way. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 21:06, 24 December 2016 (UTC)