Despite lofty predictions by some academics,
pundits, and practitioners that voter turnout would reach levels not seen since the turn of the last
century, the percentage of eligible citizens casting ballots in the 2008 presidential election stayed at
virtually the same relatively high level as it reached in the polarized election of 2004.
Using County-by-County election return data from USA Today together with County boundary data from the US Census' Tiger database we produced the following graphic depicting the results. Of course, blue is for the democrats, red is for the republicans, and green is for all other. Each county's color is a mix of these three color components in proportion to the results for that county.