Red State Reads, Blue State Reads
What political books are residents of your state reading? A new interactive map from Amazon shows recent book sales broken down by either "red" or "blue" political leanings.
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By clicking each state, you can see the top book sales and what percentage leans more Republican or Democrat. Amazon categorized the books and then correlated them with shipping addresses to make the map, which is updated hourly to match sales in the past 30 days.
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"Books aren't votes, and a map of book purchases can reflect curiosity as much as commitment," the site says, "but we hope our 2012 Election Heat Map will provide one way to follow the changing political conversation across the country during this election season."
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One thing to note: In addition to traditionally political books by pundits, the list includes novels like Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (red) and books on general social topics like Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools (blue). That said, if books sales are any indication, then the overwhelming amount of red on the map shows that more people are following Republican talking points than Democratic ones this year.
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Click here to explore the map and to see what books your state is reading.
Map picture via Amazon.com
