The Electoral College

The Electoral College is somewhat absurd, a holdover from the early days of our country. I'm not going to get into the reasons why it was created, but the result of it in modern times is that the presidential candidates spend an inordinate amount of time in relatively few states. Here's a map that weighs states by their electoral college value rather then geographical value, one of the benefits of which is that you can see exactly how blue the country turned as a result of Obama's election.