The Republican primaries…they’re still going on…on the long inevitable road to Romney’s coronation. Next up is Florida, always an interesting state to watch. There are a lot of people there with a whole host of interesting demographic slices. Perhaps one of the most interesting ones, at least to the media, is the Hispanic vote. Other things to look at in Florida include the burst housing bubble and rather high unemployment.
The New York Times published a graphic with a few maps and charts trying to paint the landscape of the Florida primary battle. These two selections below show which Republican primary candidates won which counties in 2008 as well as the size of the Hispanic population registered Republican.
American companies have long been moving their manufacturing overseas. Apple is no exception. However, Apple does audit its suppliers to ensure they are in compliance with the company’s code of conduct. The New York Times reported on this and included a graphic along with its article.
Apple Audits Its Suppliers
We have small multiples of line charts with small blurbs of text to highlight key stories. Clean, clear, and communicative. I contrast this with the number of charts one might see in business presentations, which presumably would have similar content in terms of audits and performance for a company, where these lines would normally be smashed together into one chart. At that point lines become indistinguishable from each other and the individual stories are missed among a muddle of a main story. Furthermore, in my experience, a business presentation would make full use of the width of the medium, in this case some 900 pixels or so. And for this story in particular that would mean, at most, by my count, 900 pixels for 5 plotted points in a timeline.
The Iowa caucuses are quickly approaching. And that means for many candidates a scramble to gain as many supporters as possible and then convert their poll ratings into votes. For the Republicans, this has been a truly topsy-turvy cycle with the distant refrain of “anyone but Mitt” echoing in the background.
So, here we are looking at the return of Newt Gingrich. Over the weekend, the New York Times published a graphic comprised of small multiples of poll numbers for the various candidates. Each chart plots the individual polls and then the moving average.
The rise of Newt Gingrich
What one can clearly see is a moving wave of discontent. It begins small with Michelle Bachmann before rising with the arrival of Rick Perry. He floundered, however, and was soon overtaken by Herman Cain. And as his support ebbed, it buoyed Gingrich to the top or near-top, depending on the poll, of the Republican candidates.
All in all, a good series of charts that tells a convincing story rather quickly and succinctly.
Simple graphs can tell great stories with little annotations. This graphic by the New York Times illustrates that point well with a stacked line chart set behind a line on the same scale. The two should match, or at least the red should be beneath the greys. When they don’t, you have a story and the Times calls it out.
Earlier this year, the earthquake and tsunami that damaged Japan also brought about failures in a nuclear plant at Fukushima. As we near the end of the year, the New York Times reports on how it might take many years for those who had to—or chose to—move away to return to a safe Fukushima.
Technology changes and changes rapidly. The United States led the way with cabled phone networks. Now, countries in Africa are skipping landlines and moving straight to mobile phones. The New York Times has an piece on the changes in technology and accompanies that piece with small multiples of choropleth maps that showcase different technologies and their prevalence.
Mobile Phone Subscriptions
What is interesting about these maps is that the Times eschewed the conventional Mercator or Robinson map projections and went with a slightly more unusual layout. But, a layout that saves some space by its contortion of the world’s oceans. Was their reason spatial or something more about maintaining consistent area? I would be curious to see the piece in print to see if it needed to fit a narrow column.
The New York Times had a piece in the Sunday paper asking whether American police have gone military, especially in the wake of the images of the police response to Occupy Oakland and Occupy Wall Street with police/troops deployed in tactical body armour, armoured vehicles, &c. The Times piece was accompanied by an Op-Art piece that took three key protests and illustrated the type of police officer responding to the unrest.
Evolution of Riot Gear
Credit for the illustration goes to Chi Birmingham. The title of this post comes from a British publication about the Brixton riot of 1981 where an individual was asked about why he was rioting was quoted as saying “We want to riot, not to work.”
Something I’ve been meaning to put up for a little while, the New York Times’ coverage of that city’s marathon and changes in the socioeconomic composition of the neighbourhoods through which the course winds.
The piece includes a narrated motion graphic explaining the changes along a map of the course, while a series of charts look at those factors from a static perspective. The horizontal axis being the route of the course.
Brooklyn segment of the NYC Marathon
Credit for the piece goes to Graham Roberts, Alan McLean, Archie Tse, Lisa Waananen, Timothy Wallace, Xaquin G.V., Joe Burgess, and Joe Ward.
In an area very close to me…quite literally…the New York Times published an article about increasing segregation between the rich and the poor via the areas where they live. The study by Stanford University found that the Philadelphia metropolitan area saw the “sharpest rise” in segregation since the 1970s—the study used census data available through 2007. The accompanying graphic highlights the growth of the segregation from 1970, using small multiples of choropleths to compare 1970 to 1990 to 2007.
In 1970, much of the metro area was middle-income neighbourhoods. Certainly, the central core of Philadelphia was depressed. So too was Chester and rural southwestern Chester County. The upper-income neighbourhoods were in the close suburbs, note the townships stretching due west of the city and you see the Main Line, one of the most affluent areas of the United States, while other veins of wealth extend along other old rail lines leaving the city.
Neighbourhoods by Income in 1970
Those such as myself who are familiar with both the area and recent history should note that places like Coatesville and Downingtown are shown as middle-income. In the 1970s, areas like this and in similar places like Falls Township in Bucks County had robust steel and manufacturing sectors that employed a substantial portion of the local population.
But, compare this to 2007 and you will begin to see how many old factory towns of middle-income areas became dense pockets of depression while the city of Philadelphia itself saw a flight of wealth to the rest of the suburbs. The rural parts of Chester, Montgomery, and Bucks have seen high growth by means of new developments of upper-middle- and upper-income homes.
There is a scene in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica where with the human population almost extinct, one character comments on the romances of two others by saying “they better start having babies”.
The demographics of the United States are changing. Not that they were not changing prior to recent years; Native American populations were reduced by English and Scottish settlers; the English and Scottish populations were diluted by Germans; then came the Irish and the Italians; then the Slavs; then Chinese—simplistic, but you get the idea.
Now, in the Midwest, as the New York Times reports in both an article and its supporting graphic, the long-established relative decline of the United States’ white population is being checked by a surge in Hispanic growth, especially in the rural plains states.
Hispanic Growth in the Plains
I am never so much a fan of the circles as sizes of population—a choropleth would have worked equally well—but it does suffice for this graphic. My larger concern is that the graphic measures growth but does not state growth between what years. Presumably, though the data is sourced from Queens College Department of Sociology, it originates in census figures. That would most likely mean growth between 2000 and 2010.
