The Electoral College map — which has long instilled bipartisan anxiety on election night in the U.S. — is eliciting more laughs than groans in the lead-up to November.
Throughout the Democratic National Convention this week, mock versions of the map have filled social media feeds on X in what’s become yet another popular political meme.
The trend involves taking a blank map of the country, coloring it in mostly blue or red and then writing a joke to indicate how Democrats or Republicans could win the entire Electoral College. The college consists of 538 electors, and 270 votes are needed for a candidate to win the presidency.
Many of the recent memes have text that starts with, “The electoral map if …”
While meme maps are not a new component of elections — with some dating back to the social media’s infancy — interactive maps and Electoral College map generators are more accessible than ever.
Know Your Meme, the online meme database, said the map trend dates back to the 2000 election, in which former President George W. Bush, then the governor of Texas, narrowly beat out former Vice President Al Gore.
As it became more apparent that Bush had won the presidency, some posted “un-motivational posters” (a spoof of “motivational posters”) to now-defunct sites of Electoral College maps that deemed the country the “United States of Florida,” a nod to the painstaking recount in the Sunshine State that eventually secured Bush’s presidency.
In the following election, when Bush took on then-Sen. John Kerry, NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” broadcast a skit about the Electoral College map. (“Saturday Night Live” and NBC News are both owned by NBCUniversal).
Maps remained a part of election humor in the elections that followed.
In 2014, the site Funny or Die posted a series of silly Electoral College maps.
In 2016, the political news website FiveThirtyEight posted two Electoral College maps showing what it would look like if only men voted and if only women voted, respectively. That also prompted a flurry of people on social media to meme the maps, according to Know Your Meme.
With each election, the maps become more prominent fodder and more irreverent, which is why they’re hard to miss when browsing X in 2024.
Many mock maps popped up on social media on Thursday, the night Vice President Kamala Harris accepted accepted the Democratic presidential nomination, amid speculation that the DNC would have a special guest that could be a prominent pop star.
While no unscheduled surprise guests took the stage, the rumors inspired a flurry of map-related jokes.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the DNC, please welcome your surprise guest, Katy Perry!” wrote one X user, who joked that the majority of the country would vote Republican if DNC organizers brought up the pop artist as a guest.
“the electoral map if beyonce comes out thursday to a full choir singing american requiem,” wrote another X user, with an image of an entirely blue map.
“Electoral map if taylor swift announces rep tv at the dnc,” another user on X joked, with a blue map.
