You can now see MAPS for all candidates in an election instead of just one. I'm very, very happy to be able to share this latest update, this was something that really bothered me from the day this site went live almost a year ago. Even now the Google software used to generate these maps is officially listed as "experimental" so it should come as no surprise that certain functionality was limited or unavailable when I first launched this site but unfortunately the only workaround would have involved an incredibly labor intensive process so I just waited. Now I'm very happy to be able to visually display all of the data I wanted.

Previously for each race that MAPS were available you could only see the map for one candidate in each race, you could at best then infer how the opposition performed but the limitation was frustrating. Now you can see the performance map for all the candidates. So for example if you happen to remember that in 2006 the Rockford Register Star was fed up with the Democratic and Republican candidates for Governor and instead endorsed Green Party candidate Rich Whitney you can look at this map and see what effect that endorsement had.

So far all the map data has been for general elections only but now I can and will add all the statewide primaries. That will probably take a few weeks (I just do this in my spare time) but I want to have it done before the NHL playoffs start and I'm sure March Madness will make it harder to find some free time.

After I get the statewide primary maps up I'd like to add more to the Chicago Aldermanic data set. The 2011 elections are already in there but I've always been meaning to add 2007 and 2003. So that's the update plan for now. As always I hope you find this information useful. Let me know if you find any errors or have any requests.