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If you work with geospatial data in Python, you most likely are familiar with the fantastic GeoPandas library. GeoPandas leverages the power of Maplotlib to enable users to make maps of their data. However, until recently, it has not been easy to add basemaps to these maps. Basemaps are the contextual map data, like Google Maps, on top of which geospatial data are often displayed.

Between April 16 and 20, 2020 the Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS), in conjunction with the California Institute of Health Equity and Action(Cal-IHEA), polled 8,800 registered voters about a variety of issues concerning the current state of politics and COVID-19. This was an unprecedented and urgently needed pulse-taking of the California populace during the pandemic.

Like many people around the world, I have been spending the last few weeks at home pouring hours into Nintendo’s newest hit game, Animal Crossing: New Horizons. In what the New York Times describe as “The Game for the Coronavirus Moment,” players take up the role of a human who moves to a deserted island to start a new town alongside their anthropomorphic animal neighbors.

Since the early days of the COVID-19 crisis (the past few months!), the spatial and temporal enormity of the situation has been tellingly conveyed in mapped data visualizations.