Twitter charts US election night via #Ivoted tweet heat map
Twitter has published an illustrative heat map of the US election day, charting the moment hundreds of millions of voters registered their preference by mapping their geographic location with time.
A handy gif shows the progression of tweets containing the hashtag #Ivoted as Americans returned from the polls having had their say. Although it doesn’t reveal who for we now know the official result which elevated Trump from the boardroom to the situation room.
Graphically highlighting the main population centres on the east and west coasts with splodges of overlapping purple, the map also includes an expanse of inactive white across much of the so-called ‘fly-over’ country in the middle.
See how America Tweeted about voting on #ElectionDay ahead of the polls closing pic.twitter.com/rSkIjtJdZN
— Twitter Data (@TwitterData) November 8, 2016
The microblogging platform is seeking to produce data-driven insights into the most notable social media moments and conversations from the campaign and why traditional pollsters and pundits called the result wrong.
It is probable of course that many of the voters who carried Trump to the White House do not have a Twitter account.