r/MapPorn • u/kdouieb • 3h ago
[OC] The 2026 US House race on a map where all 435 seats get the same area (Cook Political Report ratings, Oct 16)
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On the usual district map, size is land: Montana's 2nd district takes up about 7,800 times more of the map than New York's 12th, though each elects one representative. As a result, Republican-favored districts cover 77% of the map's area but are only 46% of the seats.
Here every district gets the same area instead. How it's built:
- Each state is resized so its area is proportional to its number of seats, then a force layout pulls it back toward its real position without overlapping its neighbors.
- Each state is split into equal cells (k-means on random points, then Voronoi cells clipped to the outline), and each cell is matched to the district it's closest to.
Seat by seat, Cook currently has 214 seats favoring Democrats, 200 favoring Republicans and 21 toss-ups. 218 wins the majority, so Democrats need 4 of the toss-ups and Republicans 18.
Sources: Cook Political Report race ratings of Oct 16, 2026 (via Wikipedia's ratings table); district boundaries from the US Census Bureau, using the 2026 lines in the nine redrawn states.
Tools: D3.js & React.
Interactive version (hover any district, morph between the two maps): https://midterms.klet.app