it is well known that to win a us presidential election it is not sufficient win the popular vote. rather, because of the electoral college, the geographical distribution of votes is crucial. data from past elections shows that a useful statistic describing the distribution of votes is its "dimension". i will explain the topological definition for the "dimension" of a subset of euclidean space, estimate it for the kerry and bush votes in the 2004 us presidential election, and recall the consequences for the outcome of that election.