Alas, these are not the fun type of parties, but the two main US political ones. But overall, before some more primary and caucus votes tomorrow, I think this Wall Street Journal piece nicely captures and illustrates the changes in and the differences between the bases of the two parties.
Credit for the piece goes to the Wall Street Journal graphics department.
Last night contained one victory for John Kasich. The Ohio governor outlasted all but Trump and Cruz and therefore represents the only establishment candidate. He also supposedly represents the moderate wing of the Republican Party. But within an article on FiveThirtyEight is a map showing how he may not be as moderate as he claims. Kasich has signed legislation creating difficult conditions for clinics and so many have closed.
Well, here’s another Tuesday so here’s another election day. Today we have an animation from the Wall Street Journal that succinctly shows how important this evening’s results are for Donald Trump. If he wins everything, his path to the nomination is easier, if not, it is doable, but far from easy. That sounds obvious, but it contrasts with other candidates who, if they lose, no longer have a chance.
The really nice bit about this piece, however, is that at the end you can make your own predictions for each state and see how that impacts the delegate count.
Credit for the piece goes to Randy Yeip and Stuart Thompson.
Another Tuesday, more primary and caucus victories for Donald Trump in his quest to become the Republican nominee. However one of the refrains you hear from the right is that he is not a true conservative. How true is that? Well the BBC put together an article comparing Trump to the other candidates and some previous Republican presidents on various issues like foreign policy.
Okay, so it sort of works with cutout photos of people pasted onto an American flag background. But I cannot quite take the piece seriously because of its amateurish design. Maybe the American flag makes sense as a background graphic? But the heads? Surely not.
So what happens if we take a more serious approach—though I admit originally the idea of a Trump candidacy seemed farcical—to this graphic? Well I took a quick stab this morning.
Credit for the original goes to the BBC graphics department.
On Tuesday I tracked the results primarily with the New York Times and the Washington Post. I really enjoyed the Post’s coverage as they designed a homepage for the night’s results. The results were placed at the centre of the content, as you can see in the screenshot below. Below the map and table, content updated on the right with links to more static content on the left.
The map and table above naturally updated throughout the course of evening. I found their decision to move states from one table to the other when the race was declared a brilliant little decision. When reinforced with a small checkmark, the movement from the lower table to the final table at the top gave a real sense of progress—maybe momentum—to the victories of both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Overall, this was a very helpful site for me to follow the results streaming in Tuesday night.
Credit for the piece goes to the Washington Post graphics department.
Well, Super Tuesday is over. And if you spent last night under a rock, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton cleaned almost enough house to brush away their competition. Almost. The political analysis begins…now. But we will leave that for another day. I liked this one particular chart from FiveThirtyEight’s coverage.
We have a nice set of small multiples—please kill the cute illustrations of the candidates’ heads—comparing the number of items in Google News and Google Searches. The graphic goes a long way in showing just how much coverage Trump has received over the past few months against very little for others.
Credit for the piece goes to FiveThirtyEight’s graphics department.
Super Tuesday is the first test of an American presidential candidate’s ability to run—and win—a semi-national campaign. Unlike the one-off primaries or caucuses in places like Iowa or New Hampshire, for today, each candidate has had to prepare for votes in 11 states. And these states are as varied as Alabama to Texas to Massachusetts to Alaska. Consequently, Super Tuesday also means lots of delegates are at stake.
So before the results are announced, let’s look at Bloomberg Politic’s piece that is basically a delegate counter with explanations. (Because right now super-delegates are not at stake.) In the interactive graphic side, we have a counter for every pledged delegate.
I think in the big box up top, the only missing element is some visual measure of just how far each candidate remains from the magic number. In the Republican case, that is 1237 delegates. Below that, however, I really love the tiles that summarise the individual state results, both in delegates and vote share. (After all, some states are entirely proportional, some semi-proportional, and some none-at-all/winner-take-all.)
Credit for the piece goes to Alex Tribou and Jeremy Scott Diamond.
Back to the Iowa Caucus results for a moment. A lot of the day-of forecasting for elections is done by entrance and exit polls. So in this piece from the Washington Post, we take a look at entrance poll results. This is basically a two-parter. The first is showing each candidate and the group they won and a number indicates by how much they won the demographic group.
If you click on any of the demographic groups in particular, you are brought to the part of the page with the actual full results for the demographic. The format is simple a basic heat map with table. Nothing fancy, but nothing fancy is required for that type of data. Interestingly, the colour denotes not the share, but the result. I am not sure I would have done that, but it is a minor quibble.
Credit for the piece goes to Lazaro Gamio and Scott Clement.
If you did not realise it, today is the first day of the second phase of the American presidential election process. Phase 1 was all the posturing and getting-to-know-me stuff from every candidate. A few dropped out, but now the first votes will be placed in the cold and later tonight snowy town centres of Iowa. The big story for Iowa is can Trump fend off Cruz and can Hillary fend off Bernie. (I like how we can clearly delineate the two parties by whether we use surnames or given names.)
I love election season and in particular the visualisations that go along with them. But I have been making a conscious effort not to go overboard. But that phase is over, so today we look at FiveThirtyEight’s range plots that I have enjoyed for some time now.
They are sort of like a more intuitive version of the familiar box plot. Your highest probability falls within the red—what other colour did you expect—and the average value is denoted. But you can also see that the curves are asymmetric. In short, anybody from Carson up really has a shot. But expect to see Trump or Cruz on top in Iowa.
The race, however, is not quite as exciting on the Democratic side. However, much like I am surprised that Trump is not just still running, but leading, I am surprised about Bernie Sanders’ strength. While he is further behind than Cruz is behind Trump, it is still quite possible for Iowa to “feel the Bern” as they say.
There are of course other visualisation pieces out there—on this page even—but how about we ease into the commentary? After the presidential election is much more a marathon than a sprint. Anyway, I guess we will all see how accurate these plots are come this time Tuesday.
Credit for the piece goes to the FiveThirtyEight design team.
The news this morning carried the latest polling data out of Iowa for the Republicans. And in that state, Ted Cruz now polls above Donald Trump. And so I wanted to share this post from the Economist last week that looks at how Trump rises every time he says something ridiculous. Could it just be that we should expect even more ridiculous this week?
Credit for the piece goes to the Economist’s Data Team.