Blue wins – if there is a right to left continuous path of blue regions
Red wins – if there is north to south continuous path of red regions
(A region is red or blue according to the majority of voters.)
This method is very noise-sensitive.
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Does Florida counts as right to left? 😀
This would have interesting consequences for political strategy, as the map you gave is winning for red but just barely. In a few places the red region is only one county thick.
Is there a way to maybe plot a single, optimal line through the north-south red-connecting regions? Maybe by population? (It shall be called the McCain-Palin Line, and when one crosses it, one shall know that… uh, I guess not really anything meaningful?)
I think Hex transpose might be better 🙂
Blue wins – if there is a north to south continuous path of blue regions
Red wins – if there is left to right continuous path of red regions
Isnt there an ambiguity if the region is not convex?
For instance, N-S line from Seattle to Frisco, and W-E line from Tampa to Miami is possible.
This reminds me of childrens’ quiz show from when I was a kid called Blockbusters.
I can’t match this to any presidential election. Is this a congressional result?
Interesting problem. It has some similarities to the “Scramble for Africa” during the New Imperialism period, where rival imperialists (mainly the British and the French) attempted to form a continuous territory in Africa: The British Empire strategy was the establishment of a north-south axis (Cairo-Cape) while French main efforts where in East-West French Equatorial Africa.
Of course it was not a question of African nations voting for any of these rivals…
Take a look at this map from 1898 (British possessions are in yellow, French possessions in pink): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Africa1898.png.
Who is winning?
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Dear jd2178, I couldnt find the source of the piclure again; I suppose you are right. Dear Erel, a similar comment was made also here: http://godplaysdice.blogspot.com/2009/02/electoral-hex-redux-and-african.html
There might be neither a red nor a blue winner of this game, since four counties meet in several places (most famously at Four Corners).
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