{
  "alt": "County map of the United States, with a slider over seven elections from 1876 to 2024, colored by each county's two-party margin minus the national margin. In 2024 {fact:far_c_2024} of counties are in the two darkest classes on either side of zero, {fact:far_rep_c_2024} of them on the Republican side and {fact:far_dem_c_2024} on the Democratic side; in 1976 {fact:far_c_1976} are, and most counties in the Northeast, Midwest and West are within {fact:cut} points of the national margin.",
  "caption": "Pale counties voted close to the nation, and the two darkest shades of each color are {fact:cut} points or more from it. Blue counties were more Democratic than the nation and red counties more Republican, whatever the winner of the county. The map opens on 2024, when {fact:far_rep_c_2024} of the {fact:n_far_c_2024} far counties are red and {fact:far_dem_c_2024} are blue; move the slider to see 1976, when most counties in the Northeast, Midwest and West are within {fact:cut} points of the national margin, and 1904 and 1940, when most counties in the former Confederacy were far on the Democratic side. Counties differ in size: the average far Democratic county cast {fact:far_size_ratio_2024} times as many votes as the average far Republican county, so area overstates the votes of far Republican counties. The tooltip also gives the county's own margin.",
  "data": [],
  "id": "county_margin_map",
  "notes": [
    "Counties are drawn on 2020 boundaries and joined on FIPS code. A county with no return, or whose code is absent from the 2020 map, draws as no data: not counting Alaska, {fact:nodata_1876} of the {fact:n_map_units} counties on the map have no return in 1876 and {fact:nodata_1904} have none in 1904, and no other frame has more than {fact:nodata_other_max}, after retired county codes are mapped to their 2020 successors. None of the seven elections is a third-party year. The classes break at minus and plus {fact:cut_very}, {fact:cut} and {fact:band} points."
  ],
  "source": "County presidential returns, 1868-2024 (Algara and Amlani for 1868-2020, MIT Election Data and Science Lab for 2024); full counts, not survey estimates; shares weighted by two-party votes unless stated",
  "spec": {
    "fips": "fips",
    "frame": "year",
    "frames": [
      1876,
      1904,
      1940,
      1976,
      2000,
      2016,
      2024
    ],
    "legendLabel": "County margin minus national margin, points (negative is more Republican, positive is more Democratic)",
    "payload": "county_margin_map.json",
    "scale": {
      "domain": [
        -60,
        0,
        60
      ],
      "palette": "party",
      "thresholds": [
        -40,
        -20,
        -5,
        5,
        20,
        40
      ],
      "type": "diverging"
    },
    "tooltipKeys": [
      "county_margin"
    ],
    "value": "relative_margin",
    "valueFormat": {
      "digits": 0,
      "signed": true
    }
  },
  "subtitle": "County two-party margin minus the national two-party margin of the same election, percentage points (positive is more Democratic than the nation), seven presidential elections from 1876 to 2024",
  "title": "In 2024, {fact:far_c_2024} of counties were {fact:cut} or more points from the national margin, against {fact:far_c_1976} in 1976",
  "type": "county-map",
  "width": "full"
}