Every four years or so, the United States is confronted with the silliness that is the electoral college. Adding to the confrontation are maps of the country resolved to either the state level or the county level that show a sea of red with blue along the coasts (state level) or at the major cities (county level). It makes one wonder how a democrat could win in such a red country. Well, Karim Douieb does a good job of answering this question with a series of data visualizations (Fox, LA Times, jetpack, FLOWINGDATA). Douieb posts helpful descriptions of his visualizations here, but I think they are fairly self-explanatory if you know the basic difference between the popular vote and the electoral college. Here are his images:
The Daily Take 