Obama won about 70 percent of these counties. Here’s the map:

The Daily Viz

That map, of course, can be misleading — as often happens in elections. That because the area of the counties can distort their actual voting power. In this case, Obama won more “majority minority” counties with urban populations and many more voters, such as Los Angeles (Calif.), Cook (Ill.) and Kings (N.Y.) counties, among others. Romney carried rural Republican counties, largely in Texas and the west.

Obama received nearly 18 million votes in the “majority minority” counties he carried. Romney got 2 million votes in his “majority minority” counties. In the end, Obama received a net 10 million votes from “minority majority” counties — nearly double his national margin over Romney in the country as a whole.

The map below uses proportional circles on top of the choropleth map above to help visualize the total votes in each county. You can see how Obama won in many of the most-populous counties, increasing his national margin (though not necessarily helping with the Electoral College — except in critical purple states he carried, such as Florida and Virginia).

The Daily Viz

You can download the data here.

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Included in the release was a note that six more counties had flipped to “majority minority,” as the bureau calls them. These are counties in which non-Hispanic whites represent less than half the population.

With those six, the country now has at least 352 counties — about one in 10 of the total — in this category. Here they are on a map:

The Daily Viz

These counties exist largely because because of the relative size of the Hispanic and black populations (though Hawaii and Alaska have high Asian population rates), depending on geography. Western counties have higher percentages of Hispanic residents, and counties in the Deep South have higher rates of black residents. Of course there are some exceptions sprinkled throughout the country.

This map shows the rate of “minority” residents by county:

The Daily Viz

This map shows the percentage of Hispanic residents by county:

The Daily Viz

This map shows the percentage of black residents by county:

The Daily Viz

You can download the data here. Tomorrow we’ll examine how these counties voted in the 2012 presidential election.

For more updates, follow me on Twitter.

Source: Rich Blocks, Small Blocks

* These data have high margins of error in small geographic units like Census tracts, which this service uses, so don’t take the figures literally. Still, the estimates can be useful for spotting broader trends about communities.

Thanks to the wife for sharing this discovery.

View the larger, interactive version here.

New Hampshire, Washington and Utah top the list, with more than 82 percent of their residents having Internet access. New Mexico, Mississippi and Arkansas are at the bottom, with about 64 percent of residents able to get online at home. Here’s a state-by-state map:

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, October 2010.

There’s much more in the graphic: housing, demographics, etc. Check it out. 

The Houston region is now the most ethnically diverse large metropolitan area in the country, surpassing New York City.

Two suburbs – Missouri City and Pearland – have become even more diverse than the city of Houston. Other suburbs aren’t far behind.

This chart compares the demographics of cities in the Houston area: 

This chart compares the largest metro areas in the country: 

Read the full report, which compared the number of demographic groups and their relative size, here [PDF].

The map used 2000 Census data to show how black residents are clustered in northeast and southeast neighborhoods, while white residents live in the northwest. He also mapped poverty, income, crime and education — creating a stunning series of images about inequality in the city.

I don’t have Rankin’s cartography skills, but I’ve tried my best to update his race map, using similar colors and features, with the 2010 Census data. First, this map shows concentrations of black residents, who made up roughly half the city’s population in 2010, down 10 percentage points from the previous decade: 

This map shows where Hispanic residents are clustered: 

Here’s another version with all major race/ethnicity groups. The dots represent 25 residents per U.S. Census block: 

All the data used to make the maps can be download here. 

The comparison of data on state of residence in 2010 to data on state and region of birth reflects the cumulative effect of long-term patterns of migration. Fifty-nine percent of people in the United States were born in their state of residence. However, there is significant geographic variation.

Seventy percent of people in the Midwest, for example, live in the same state as their birth. While just under half the people in the West remained in their birth states. The West, by the way, has the highest proportion of foreign-born residents: 20 percent, according to the report.

Here’s a state-by-state map: 

Some states — such as Idaho, Utah and Wyoming — have both high marriage rates and low higher education rates. But that really says more abou those states than whether marriage and higher education correlate. Washington, D.C., for example, has the highest higher education rate and the lowest marriage rate. 

Still, it’s fun to see how states compare. View a larger version here. 

Data source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey