David Montgomery at the Pioneer Press has a great piece up today demonstrating the difference between a “regular” map projection and a cartogram when it comes to representing population and political balance.

Here are his two maps of the state’s legislative senate districts, along with one that I added showing the core city senate districts:

Here’s what Montgomery says about the difference:

My selection of “metro” districts was of course, somewhat arbitrary. You could easily expand the yellow to include more suburban areas, or subtract suburban areas to reduce it to the urban core. Both of those tell different stories of political geography, and I hope to revisit them over the coming months.

Check out the whole story. The good news is that he’s promising more spatial analysis!