Politics - Chart Porn

Politics Archive:

24 Feb 2012

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.

(1) Comment

2013 Federal Budget

In: Interactive Politics Source: NYT Source: Washington Post Source: WSJ

14 Feb 2012

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:

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Why Does a Salad Cost More than a Big Mac?

In: Food Politics Source: NYT

11 Feb 2012

Originally from PCRM, but I link to the NYT commentary below. Farm subsidies are a joke. Actually, almost all subsidies are a joke, now that I think about it.

(10) Comments

The Deficit: Obama vs Bush

In: Politics Source: Washington Post

3 Feb 2012

Ezra Klein takes a crack at comparing the cost of major policy decisions:

(5) Comments

European Response to Crisis

In: Bailout Finance Global Economy Politics

1 Feb 2012

Almost makes it look like they’ve done a lot:

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Living in a QE World

In: Finance Global Economy Politics Source: Ritholtz

31 Jan 2012

Another problem brewing. The world is running out of places to kick the credit can. As usual, there is much insight to be gained from the discussion and comments over at Barry Ritholtz’s The Big Picture.

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Graphic Enhanced State of the Union Address

In: Innovative Politics

31 Jan 2012

The White House released a video of last week’s State of the Union address, with a split screen showing supporting charts, diagrams, and talking points. It’s not a brilliant model of visualization best practices by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a step in the right direction, and represents a recovery from the ridicule that Ross Perot received for using charts on the national political stage in 1992.

For further insight (on both design and economic issues), I HIGHLY RECOMMEND watching this in conjunction with Jodi Beggs critique over at Economists Do it With Models.

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Red State Socialism

In: Politics

25 Jan 2012

Anyone have a better idea of how to visualize this data? It feels like there should be one – but maybe sometimes a table is the right tool for the job.

(13) Comments

The Strait of Hormuz

In: Interactive Maps Politics

23 Jan 2012

This FT map illustrates just how packed things are at the Persian Gulf’s bottleneck. The designers wisely chose to allow viewers to select which layers of information they wanted to see, and also provided useful related information as popups.

Here is the map with all layers turned on – which obviously would have been a disaster without the interactive filtering.

(note: some FT features require a subscription to view)

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SOPA Opera

In: Politics

20 Jan 2012

Democracy in action? or Congress blowing with the wind?

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Ushahidi Visualization Platform

In: Graphic Tools Maps Politics

17 Jan 2012

Ushahidi is a non-profit tech developer of free and open source software for collecting and real-time visualization crowd-sourced information. The project originated in a desire to map post-election violence in Kenya back in 2008 – but it has since expanded into a number of free toolsets that can be set up quickly during emergencies. To be honest, I haven’t dived too deep into this, but I wanted to post it in case others have a need.

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Candidate Blind Date

In: Interactive Politics Source: USA Today

11 Jan 2012

Answer a series of 11 questions to see which presidential candidate’s views are most like your own. At the end, you can also roll over each candidates columns to see what their specific positions are. Personally, I thought some of the questions were slanted and missing answers that fit my beliefs – no shock, I suppose, considering they had to fit the answers to candidate platforms.

(4) Comments

Press Freedom Map

In: Interactive Maps News Media Politics

9 Jan 2012

I went to the Newseum this weekend (a great museum – recommend it to everyone) and saw the below wall sized map of freedom of the press. The online version of it isn’t much to look at, but the pop-up/drill down information for each country is very rich.

Online version (which was also available at the Museum at the kiosks you see above):

(2) Comments

Election Graphics: Washington Post

In: Interactive Maps Politics Source: Washington Post

4 Jan 2012

The Post is doing a great job visualizing the election so far, with a number of clear tools that they are keeping very up to date.

First up: Maps and interactive filtering of spending on ads, including videos of the ads themselves:

A Primary Tracker: mapping out candidate visits, “pre-game analysis”, results by county, and “post-game analysis” – for EACH state!

And a campaign finance explorer:

They also have something called the @MentionMachine that supposedly tracks candidates by twitter mentions and other media references that you can drill down through. Unfortunately, it isn’t working for me on either Firefox or IE.