In the first post of this series I presented a gallery of Google offered maps, including the standard red\blue poll map. In this installment I want to lighten things up a little bit. As stated in my first post, the principle goal of this series is to look at various online map offerings related to the 2008 elections. As I have already done a standard poll based electoral map, I figured I would highlight something a little different in this post, the Amazon.com Political Book Buying Map.

The basic premise to this map site is that books can be categorized based on their jacket, author information and\or subject matter into the two political parties. The Amazon staff has chosen 250 books for each party that meets these requirements and has tracked the sales by state. This selection can then be used to calculate the book buying public’s overall political reading slant, in other words what are people’s political buying and reading interests and how does the percentage difference between the two play out geographically. There is more information about the selection process and the list of chosen books here.

The map allows you to choose different time frames and even see the buying trends from the 2004 presidential election for that time frame. Clicking on a state will give you the top Republican and Democrat book bought as well as the percentage sold for that state. The sites layout has the standard left side bar with additional content including hosted author discussions, Interviews and candidate reading lists. Amazon does recognize that some books are just unable to be categorized by one party or the other and have created a purple section for nonpartisan political books. These are unfortunately not included on the map but in the sidebar.

I think this is gives a fascinating glimpse at the political reading habits of people this election season. The content in the side bar fits nicely and accompanies the map content. I know Amazon’s goal is to sell books, but I really enjoy it when maps are created that provide different perspectives, such as electoral poll maps being the mainstream staple during presidential elections. It is definitely interesting seeing what the polls are indicating in a map, but it is just as interesting to see what books people are buying and what their habits are in relation to the presidential election. I feel these maps transcend online cartography and edge us closer to online map content to display more sociological questions.

Check it out and make your own interpretations of the data at Amazon Political Book Map. Please feel free to leave me your thoughts or interpretations in the comments. Please check back as I will be adding additional content to this series soon.