Mapping the road to the White House, Google-style

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The long road to the White House travels straight through cyberspace this year, and Google has launched a site offering several unique maps to help you follow it.

The Google Maps Elections Gallery highlights how people are using Web 2.0 tools to follow and analyze the campaign. The site showcases mash-ups of Google maps focused on the 2008 presidential campaign, providing an interesting way to visualize the race from the stratosphere all the way down to street level.

The Campaign Trail map shows where the presumptive nominees -- Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain -- have been campaigning and where they’re headed. Another map tracks Google search queries for the candidates.

Maps can add a whole new layer of understanding to the race and the people running it. A pair of maps tracks each candidate’s life across the planet, allowing you to see, for example, the location where McCain was held as a prisoner during the Vietnam War (pictured above) and the private prep school in Honolulu that Obama attended. The FundRace map, provided by the Huffington Post, uses colors to show the geographical fund-raising strength of each candidate and party. With blue for Democratic contributions and red for Republican ones, zooming in to the Hollywood area illustrates the entertainment industry’s left-leaning nature: The map resembles a handful of raspberries spilled onto a deep blue tablecloth.

Google is hoping people will expand the site by creating their own versions. There’s a tool to help you build a map in three steps, with data available from the Census Bureau, Twitter and other locations. Amateur political cartographers, have at it.

-- Jim Puzzanghera

Puzzanghera, a Times staff writer, covers tech and media policy from Washington, D.C.

Image courtesy of Google