With the Superbowl just a few weeks away, thought it would be interesting to take a look back on the season leading up to the play offs and player performance from a geographical perspective. The first take, summarized in this blog, focusses on selected positions from the offense side: quarterback, running back, tight end and wide receiver. Player performance is measured using total fantasy football points for the regular season (www.fftoday.com) and the hometowns of each player geocoded using latitude and longitude coordinates.

The heat maps that follow show what parts of the country the top performers for each position come from; in more technical terms, the maps are players’ hometowns weighted by fantasy football points. For football trivia buffs, some summary statistics are provided below each map. Top performing team for each position is based on average fantasy football points and top players on total points.

The complete dataset with other player attributes: college/university attended, number of years pro, division and conference, average fantasy football points for the regular season and number of games played can be found at www.geocommons.com.

Wide Receivers

Top Performers: Randy Moss (New England Patriots); Braylon Edwards (Cleveland Browns); Terrell Owens (Dallas Cowboys)

Top Performing Team: New England Patriots

Most Common Hometown State: California

Average Years Pro: 4.9

Running Backs

Top Performers: LaDainian Thomlinson (San Diego Chargers); Brian Westbrook (Philadelphia Eagles); Adrian Peterson (Minnesota Vikings)

Top Performing Team: Pittsburgh Steelers

Most Common Hometown State: Florida

Average Years Pro: 4.33

Tight Ends

Top Performers: Jason Whitten (Dallas Cowboys); Antononio Gates (San Diego Chargers); Tony Gonzalez (Kansas City Chiefs)

Top Performing Team: Dallas Cowboys

Most Common Hometown State: California

Average Years Pro: 4.6

Quarterbacks

Top Performers: Tom Brady (New England Patriots); Tony Romo (Dallas Cowboys); Drew Brees (New Orleans Saints)

Top Performing Team: New England Patriots

Most Common Hometown State: California

Average Years Pro: 6.03

Tony Romo and Jessica Simpson

Tony Romo was clearly a superstar this season but a look at his weekly fantasy football points shows a precipitous drop towards the end of the 17 weeks. Have anything to do with Jessica Simpson? Weigh in below.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Economy was the number 1 issue for Michigan Republicans and they voted in large numbers for Mr. Romney. Michigan has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the U.S. Huge job losses in manufacturing sector, mainly due to down-turn in Michigan’s auto-industry has voters worried about the future. Romney’s “optimistic” message that he would fight to bring those jobs back to Michigan resonated with voters as opposed to McCain’s “straight talk” message that the lost jobs are never coming back!

Romney vis McCain: Michigan primary vote

Note: Brighter hues = Higher vote count, Darker hues = Lower vote count

This is Romney’s first win (not including his win in the Wyoming primary) and probably saved him from dropping out of the primaries after finishing 2nd, both in Iowa and New Hampshire. McCain and Huckabee finished 2nd and 3rd respectively. With Romney’s win in Michigan, the GOP has no clear cut front runner. Romney got nearly 38.9% votes (~337,700), to McCain’s 29.7% (257,400), followed by Huckabee at 16% (~139,600).

DNC (Democratic National Committee) decided to punish Michigan for violating primary rules by moving forward its primary date. They stripped Michigan of all its delegates for the National convention. As a result, both Obama and Edwards withdrew their names, while Clinton’s name remained on the ballot and she won the primary. According to some, Clinton would have won the primary anyway.

Clinton vis Mr. Uncommitted: Michigan primary vote

Note: Brighter hues = Higher vote count, Darker hues = Lower vote count

Interestingly many who wanted to support either Obama or Edwards voted “Uncommitted”. Clinton won more than 55% vote (~327,300) compared to 40% vote for Mr. “Uncommitted” (~236,900). And much of the “Uncommitted” vote came from African Americans and young voters according to the exit polls. This does not bode well for the Clinton camp, as the Democratic primaries move south where African-Americans are a major constituency. More on this in the future blogs.

In the meanwhile you may want to explore all of the maps shown above at Geocommons. Search with keywords “Michigan” or “Primary” to discover dynamic, interactive maps with zoom-in and pan.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Clinton’s come-from-behind stunning victory in the New Hampshire Primary makes her the New Comeback Kid. Below is a heatmap of spatial distribution of Clinton’s votes by cities/towns and places in the southern New Hampshire.

We at FortiusOne further analyzed voting patterns to find spatial distribution of where Obama, the New Kid on the block won more votes than Clinton in New Hampshire primary.

Explore the interactive heatmaps along with tons of data on Presidential politics on Geocommons.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Romney in his concession speech referred to his second place finish as winning a silver medal, that makes McCain the gold medalist and Huckabee a bronze winner. Here are the results for the top three candidates, McCain (37% ~88,400) Romney (32% ~75,200) and Huckabee (11% ~26,600). We at FortiusOne further analyzed the voting patterns to find the spatial distribution of relative advantages for McCain and Romney. Below are the snapshots of heatmaps based the city/town level voting data on GeoCommons.

The spatial distribution showing where McCain won more votes compared to Romney.

The flipside of the above map is the one below showing where Romney won more votes compared to McCain.

Explore the interactive heatmap using pan and zoom here.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Of the 850,000 or so registered voters, nearly 44% are Independents, 30% registered Republicans and even smaller percentage (26%) are registered Democrats. And since these Indepenedent voters can vote for either a Republican or a Democratic candidate, they are indispensable for candidates from both parties.

The current surge in polls, both for Obama ( ~39% to Clinton’s ~29%) and McCain (~32% to Romney’s ~30%) -who won the primary vote in 2000 against Bush- can be attributed to a limited extent on their increased appeal in their respective parties and could help them to win tomorrow. However, the main reason for these extraordinary poll numbers, especially for Obama are mainly due to Independent voters. Ironically, the more independent voters go to Obama, the less likely it is for McCain to win tomorrow’s vote, which in turn could mean a win for Romney.

Below is a heatmap of spatial distribution of Independent voters across the Granite State from 2004. For an interactive version of the map where you could use pan and zoom functions to navigate the map and explore details of distribution of Democrats and Republican voters, go to Geocommons .

New Hampshire Independent Voters, originally uploaded by rajkulkarni63.

The original data for Year 2004 was compiled by Belgen on Many Eyes website which was then geocoded and rasterized using GeoCommons tools to generate the current heatmap.

Popularity: 14% [?]