Fun with maps: A totally new way to view Congress
Bridgers (purple) and dividers (gray) exist across parties and geographies.
As we prepare for the release of the mid-term grades for Congress later this summer, we’re having fun learning new ways to present the data. Today we share two political maps.
The first is the old and tired way of carving up the House of Representatives.
Now check out the fresh way to view the political map using Bridge Grades—showing where the bridgers and dividers are independent of party affiliation.
Interesting, right?
What do you see in these maps?
The red / blue map hits you in the face with the urban and rural divide, and a bi-coastal pattern. New Mexico is distinct as an outlier.
Meanwhile, the purple / gray map, based on Bridge Grades1, shows a lot more nuance. The central time zone bridgers show up strongly—notably in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. It’s nice to see bridgers in Florida although the rest of the Southeast is underrepresenting. The rust belt looks strongly purple with Michigan, northern Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania popping. New England also is deep purple. But, the star of the show might be the Pacific Northwest with northern Oregon and all of Washington state coming in purple. Respect!
To have fun with the map, be sure to click on it, and then use the + / - controls in the lower right of the map to zoom into some of the smaller districts.
Don’t forget, these grades are from last year’s Congress, as we are still gathering data to grade the current representatives.
Bridge Grades is a non-ideological report card for politicians. Using 3rd party data, we grade politicians on their abilities to collaborate and build consensus solutions for the common interests of multiple parties versus how polarizing they behave. In aggregating data from multiple non-partisan 3rd party sources, Bridge Grade is like Rotten Tomatoes for politicians. Bridge Grades measure not “what” a politician thinks, but rather “how” the politician behaves. Independent of red or blue ideology, Bridge Grades objectively sorts bridgers from dividers. Updated Bridge Grades for the 119th Congress coming in Summer 2025.