Presidential Primary and Caucus Dates Over Time

[Editor's Note: After having gotten similar feedback on the maps from some folks here at UGA today, I thought I'd attempt to edit them. They were nice in isolation -- if you had the time to learn and discern the color coding -- but for showing a trend quickly, the original colors weren't cutting it. So I decided to take Matthew up on his suggestion and see if I could make a six shade gradient work. I think it does. You can definitely see a stark contrast between 1976 and 2008 if you toggle back and forth between the two at the end of the slideshow. Here, for the sake of a reminding everyone, are the rules for reading the maps.]

This weekend I put together a few maps for a job talk and class lecture I'm doing later this week on frontloading and thought I'd share them with everyone. The slideshow below has the states color-coded based on the month in which their delegate selection event occurred in the elections from 1976-2008. You'll see that some states are divided with two separate colors in some years. That reflects the different dates on which Democratic and Republican states held (in most cases) their respective caucuses. Though there are states that had primaries for one party and caucuses for the other. In those instances where the state is divided, the left half color corresponds to the Democratic contest date and the right color, the Republicans'.

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Presidential Primary and Caucus Dates Over Time (Take 1)

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