Last night was election night. Okay, maybe not the big midterm, but there were still a few interesting races. The one I want to look at it, however, is the gubernatorial race in Virginia. Maps are pretty much the default in big, statewide races like these and it is no surprise that the three screenshots here are use a map as an anchor component.
The Huffington Post uses a scatterplot to compare the margin of victory for Terry McAuliffe to that of Barack Obama in 2012. A technical flaw places the drop down menu atop the plot, unfortunately, but the component works to show differences in just one year.
Over at the New York Times, the Virginia results were given a nice overview. Here they used a text summary to explain the race in short. They used a small amount of space to show polling results over time. And then beneath the map they looked at recent elections across the state.
The Washington Post, which reports to the northern counties of Virginia, had a much simpler piece. They used solely a map to present the data.
Credit for the Huffington Post piece goes to Aaron Bycoffe, Jay Boice, and Hilary Fung.
Credit for the New York Times piece goes to the New York Times’ graphics department.
Credit for the Washington Post piece goes to the Washington Post’s graphics department.