The Republican Party has a problem. Its policy platform appeals to “angry white guys” and they are not being bred fast enough. And as the quotes indicate, that isn’t my idea. That comes from no less than Lindsey Graham, Republican Senator for South Carolina. The Wall Street Journal looks at just four states previously safely Republican that are now trending Democratic.
Credit for the piece goes to Dante Chinni and Randy Yeip.
Women are half the population, but only twenty percent of the upper chamber of the United States Congress. As this great interactive timeline from the New York Times shows, at least that inequity has been narrowing over the last several elections.
The infographic comes in two main views. The first highlights women in the Senate and assigns them chronologically and then colours them by party. Important or notable senators are annotated appropriately. This view also shows the breakdown of women in the Senate at any one time in the small chart in the upper-left. Mousing over senators then provides a little bit of information about the woman in question.
But to put it in perspective, by selecting All Senators, the user can see the whole elected history of the US Senate—remember, prior to the 1920s you did not directly elect senators. That makes for a lot of grey bars, i.e. a lot of men.
Credit for the piece goes to Hannah Fairfield, Alan McLean and Derek Willis.
I don’t often get to share printed infographic work because so much of the data visualisations and the narratives I see are seen through the interwebs. And since I cannot live in every city in the world and troll through all their newspaper pages for good infographics, I have to see online/digital versions.
That’s why this work by Hyperakt for the Italian weekly La Lettura is a great find. Hyperakt included a photo of their work in its natural environment, i.e. the printed page. The immediate drawback is that I do not speak Italian and can comprehend very little of the piece. Thankfully, Hyperakt did include a translated version on their page.
Credit for the piece goes to Deroy Peraza and Eric Fensterheim.
Reality is never what you think. Over at the Washington Post’s Wonkblog I found a post about a YouTube video looking at wealth inequality in the United States. It looks at a study that compared what Americans thought the distribution of wealth in the United States is vs. what they think is an ideal distribution. And then the video compares that to the actual distribution.
The video is rather solid and does a fairly good job at explaining its point. And those unsure about wealth inequality and how it is different from and sometimes more meaningful than income inequality should read the post along with the video.
Credit for the video goes to a YouTube user named Politizane.
As the conclave in Rome is almost ready to begin, likely sometime next week, cardinals are gathering in Rome to discuss the affairs of the Catholic Church and then elect a new pope from within their ranks. Many outsiders talk about the time for a pope from outside of Europe, that the papacy has been an office for Europeans—namely Italians—for too long.
However, the preponderance of Catholics outside of Europe is, in the 2000-year history of the Church, a relatively recent phenomenon. Explosive growth in Latin America, Africa, and Asia combined with a decline in European Catholics means that it is only in the last few decades that Europeans have fallen from being nearly 2/3 of the global Catholic Church.
As my infographic attempts to explain, despite this demographic shift, the early Catholic Church chose popes from the distant corners of its territory before it contracted. That historical consolidation in Europe—Italy in particular—has led, however, to a disproportionate weight of cardinal electors, i.e. the cardinals who elect the pope, in favour of Italy and Europe. And as the cardinals typically choose from among their own, it is far more likely that the next pope will come from Europe if not Italy.
Click the image to see the full-sized graphic.
Snow should fall upon Chicago this afternoon and it may measure up to a few inches in depth. But much of this winter has been below average. And that is much the same from last year when snowfall did not even reach 20 inches.
I went through NOAA data to look at the last decade of monthly snowfall to see just how little snow has fallen this winter. (Not a lot.) And then I looked at the entirety of the NOAA records to see where 2011/2 fit in the span of winters. (One of the least snowy.) This graphic is the result.
While the Superbowl was two weekends ago, I have been sitting on this post for a little while. Probably because I really just don’t understand the sport. But over at the Guardian, the interactive team put together an interactive infographic that looked at payroll spending for each team by position and by overall position, i.e. offence vs. defence.
Admittedly I found the position part not as interesting, probably because of my aforementioned lack of understanding of the game. But the small-multiples-based exploration of the offence vs. defence numbers was quite interesting. It allows the user to highlight their preferred team and then sort the view by offence, defence, or special teams.
Credit for the piece goes to the Guardian US interactive team and Harry J. Enten.
So that fishy little storm the Weather Channel called Nemo—you may have heard of it—put a little snow across New England. Last week the New York Times published an interactive infographic that looked at when and where the snow would be falling, from New Jersey to New York to Maine.
The times are cut into six-hour blocks and show in the upper left where the snow would be falling by rate per six-hours. To the right of the map is a series of bar charts that show the snowfall pattern in more or less of a wave. Beneath all of it are a comparison of when, over the last several decades, the largest snowstorms hit Boston and New York (and how much snow each city received). A comparison of the map before to the end of the storm, except for parts of Maine.
Credit for the piece goes to Tom Giratikanon, Matthew Ericson, Xaquin G.V., Archie Tse, and Jeremy White.
Via xkcd, your Friday funny.
Detroit’s population has fallen drastically while its economy has been all but eviscerated with the near-collapse of the American automotive industry. But it was not always that way. The National Post looks at Detroit over the years, starting in 1950. It’s the mapping and charting out of the decline and fall of what was once a great city.
Credit for the piece goes to Kristopher Morrison and Richard Johnson.
