Chart Porn » Politics

How Would You Cut Defense?

Dustin — Fri, 18 May 2012 15:49:59 +0000

The NYT presents a list of options for you to decide how to trim defense spending. As usual, it’s not quite as easy as you might think – but I still got it up over $800 billion. I like this interactive way of educating people about budget issues.

50 Years of Government Spending

Dustin — Fri, 18 May 2012 15:35:50 +0000

I usually don’t like viewing stacked bars over time – it’s too hard to see what’s changing. This one still isn’t perfect, but the deficiencies are moderated somewhat by clear labels and only having the three columns. Content wise, it’s pretty fascinating too.

The Rise of the Filibuster

Dustin — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:23:29 +0000

To understand this chart you have to be quite the congressional procedure wonk. I think they should at least have to go back to having to talk the whole time. While standing on one foot. In uncomfortable shoes. With their mom watching.

Women in Parliament

Dustin — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:16:45 +0000

We’ve looked at female world leaders before. Here are some stats on representation (well, what is supposed to be representation).

Evolution of a Political Map

Dustin — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 14:50:33 +0000

A nice progression of intermediate steps in preparing a newspaper map of Santorum’s campaign, using R.

Geography of Government Benefits

Dustin — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 19:26:00 +0000

Share of income that comes from government programs, broken down by type of benefit. (related article)

Global Defense Spending and Conflict

Dustin — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:59:23 +0000

From the 2012 Military Balance report. (via)

There’s also a 2012 Chart of Conflict – but I couldn’t find a decent sized image on their site. I think they want you to buy it.

Ryan’s New Budget

Dustin — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 19:35:00 +0000

There’s are a lot of nonsense charts and projections in Paul Ryan’s new House Republican budget, but rather than get into political arguments, I’ll just post the ones I thought were actually insightful:

TSA: Grope and Pillage

Dustin — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:58:10 +0000

Some interesting facts and timelines about the Transportation Services Administration. I usually don’t post these types of info-posters anymore, but the timeline in particular caught my eye

Country Tenure

Dustin — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 21:07:00 +0000

How long do country leaders stay in charge, on average?

2012 Economic Freedom Map

Dustin — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:17:00 +0000

I’m not a fan of the Heritage Foundation, and the one time I dug into the data of their Economic Freedom Index I found that they occasionally compare apples and oranges to get around data scarcity – BUT: they do put a large research effort into the report each year. The below interactive map is well executed – but you should drill down to country level data to get a feel for what is really being measured (click on a country, then the “learn more about this country” link that pops up in the lower left. Why this requires two steps I have no idea).

Memo To Political Bloggers: Please Stop Writing About Economics; You Really Suck At It

Dustin — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 16:04:18 +0000

A wonderful post over at The Big Picture that takes both liberals and conservatives to the wood shed over their abuse of economic indicators and charts that show correlation but not causation.

Note: The comments over there are worth a read as well.

Corporate Taxes Paid

Dustin — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 20:13:00 +0000

Nice chart from the NYT showing average S&P 500 company tax rates 2005-10: total taxes (fed,state,local,foreign) over pre-tax earnings, by sector. A weighted average dot would have been nice for each sector. (related article)

Presidential Wealth

Dustin — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 19:31:54 +0000

I can’t see why anyone cares about this, but it’s been getting some press and visualization attention lately – so here ya go:

Here’s an out of focus chart from Time magazine (anyone know why their online graphics always suck? Cutbacks, probably.)

If you want more details, The Atlantic has a paragraph on each coupled with stately portraits:

An interactive version using Tableau:

And yes – it’s cold and rainy in DC today – and I’m a little grumpy. Or maybe it’s the thought of any kind of presidential analysis that is depressing me. Barf.

2013 Federal Budget

Dustin — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:37:41 +0000

A number of news agencies took a crack at visualizing Obama’s 2013 budget proposal. (If you want to try it yourself, a shocking amount of detailed data is available in spreadsheet form at the OMB website).

Below is the Washington Post’s version. You can click on any box to see a column chart of historical values. It would have been nice to be able to drill down further, but this is a good start:

The NYT created a beautiful animated – ummm – I’m not sure what this is. A dorling diagram? Well, it looks pretty, and it’s slightly more detailed than the WashPost version, but I think the brain processes square area better than circles.

The WSJ posted five charts, but they’re nothing special: