The Conservative Party of America

We enter our second week of the government shutdown. Of course, blame for the shutdown falls largely upon a small number of conservative Republican members of the House, bolstered by Senator Cruz (R-TX) and his allies in the Senate. But we already know that there are a number of moderate Republicans who want to pass a clean budget resolution. So one way of looking at this new conservative faction is as a new minor party in a coalition government with Ted Cruz as Party Leader.

The idea is not mine. Ryan Lizza first wrote about the “Suicide Caucus”, a topic that Philip Bump expanded upon several days later. However, as a thought experiment, I was curious to see what would happen if this third party, a Conservative Party, would look in data visualisation terms. So here’s a quick stab at America’s newest third party.

The Conservative Party of America

The Wars of Tom Clancy’s Universe(s)

Tom Clancy died this week. Among other novels, he authored the Hunt for Red October, Clear and Present Danger, and Patriot Games—those three were made into movies. So you may very well have heard of the man. Over at Business Insider, they mapped out the Clancy world by colouring those countries against which the United States has gone to war.

The Clancy Wars
The Clancy Wars

Credit for the piece goes to Walter Hickey.

Foreclosing on Homes in Washington, DC

Today’s post comes from the Washington Post. It is a single interactive graphic, a map, that supports a long-form article about foreclosures in Washington.

DC foreclosure map
DC foreclosure map

Credit for the piece’s graphics goes to Ted Mellnik, Emily Chow, and Laura Stanton.

Covering the New York Mayoral Primaries

Tuesday was election day in New York (among other places) where voters went to the polls for the mayoral primary (among other positions). For those living underneath what I can only presume was a very comfortable rock, this is the whole Anthony Weiner comeback election. Anyway, a bunch of different websites, most tied to the New York area, were covering the election results. So I wanted to share just a few.

First we have the Huffington Post with the most straightforward presentation. Their table covers the main candidates and their results at a borough level and at a city-wide level.

The Huffington Post's tabular results
The Huffington Post’s tabular results

The second is from the Wall Street Journal. This uses a choropleth map with different colours assigned to a select few persons running—also the only ones with a real chance of winning. Tints of these colours in each district indicate how much of the district has voted.

The Wall Street Journal reports at the district level
The Wall Street Journal reports at the district level

From WNYC we have our third example—another choropleth where different colours represent different candidates. However, unlike the Wall Street Journal, the colours here have only one tint. And instead of showing assembly districts, WNYC provides a further level of data and looks at precinct results. It does not represent the amount of the precinct that has voted, but rather whether the candidate is winning by a plurality or by a majority. Beneath the legend a second charting element is used; this details the breakdown of the vote by districts as separated into racial majority. This is an interesting addition that hints at filtering results by related data.

WNYC looks at who's winning and how
WNYC looks at who’s winning and how

And that filtering brings us to the New York Times’ piece, which does offer filtering. It highlights districts on its maps—also precinct-level and not district aggregates—based upon the metric and the specific properties of said metric. In this case, I have chosen income. And the story of different voting patterns (at this particular point in the evening) based on income is quite clear. Look at Christine Quinn’s support.

Results from people earning more than $100k
Results from people earning more than $100k
Votes from people earning less than $100k
Votes from people earning less than $100k

 

Credit for these:

Huffington Post: Aaron Bycoffe, Jay Boice, Andrei Scheinkman, and Shane Shifflett

Wall Street Journal: the Wall Street Journal’s graphics team

WNYC: Steven Melendez, Louise Ma, Jenny Ye, Marine Boudeau, Schuyler Duveen, Elizabeth Zagroba, and John Keefe

New York Times: New York Times’ graphics department

The Best and Worst States for [Insert Topic]

It’s Friday, and mercifully this is a Friday before a three-day weekend. (For all of those who, like me, have a day off coming up on Monday.) So before everyone starts travelling to places here and there and everywhere in between, you best check this series of maps. Why? Because Business Insider has polled us, well 1600 of us, to find the best and worst states for a number of metrics. My personal favourite:

“Most likely due to the fact that most Americans have never been to Philadelphia, the rest of the country believes New York also has the worst sports fans. I blame John Rocker.”

Worst sports fans
Worst sports fans

Credit for the piece goes to Walter Hickey.

More Internet, More Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg wants to get more people on the internet. And why not, it’s not like his company, a small entity you may not have heard of called Facebook, has anything to do with the internet. So this map by the Washington Post looks at what proportions of the world’s countries are using the internet.

Internet users
Internet users

Credit for the piece goes to Darla Cameron.

Say What?

This map comes from the Washington Post and it uses the American Community Survey to explore languages spoken by Americans at home other than English.

Who speaks what?
Who speaks what?

I got stuck (in a good way) on the seemingly random counties of German speakers. After I poked around a bit, I found one where almost 50% of the county speaks German. After some quick investigation, it turns out that Holmes County, Ohio is a centre for the Amish population. The Amish, of course, will often speak German or Pennsylvania Dutch, thus accounting for the abnormally high percentage of German speakers.

Credit for the piece goes to Dan Keating and Darla Cameron.

Road Kill

Driving can be dangerous. But perhaps most so in the developing world. The Pulitzer Center created this interactive map to allow users to explore just how dangerous driving can be.

A look at road deaths in Kenya
A look at road deaths in Kenya

Little windows provide details on countries the user rolls over. This data looks at deaths per 100,000 people, killer/victims, and lastly a rating of law enforcement across several different issues. The map also includes links to stories on the website as well as an information panel that related small bits of information about selected countries.

Credit for the piece goes to Tom Hundley and Dan McCarey.

US Life Expectancy

Earlier this summer I looked at a graphic by Thomson Reuters that compared life expectancy changes across the world from 1990 to 2011. Last month, the Washington Post published an interactive graphic that explores life expectancy (along with obesity and physical activity) across the United States from 1985 to 2010.

Changes in female life expectancy
Changes in female life expectancy

What I really enjoy about the piece is that each toggle for the health condition, i.e. life expectancy, obesity, physical activity, the text beneath swaps out to explain what the story is. Context is key. But then the ability to flip between the actuals and the growth for both men and women allows the user to really explore the data. And to see that growth or lack thereof is not even across the sexes.

From the design side, a minor point worth noting is the use of different colour palettes based on the mapped metric. The actual values (with the greater range) use a darker green-blue and tint that down whereas the growth values (all of three conditions) are in a different palette. Here it works, though I am more accustomed in similar pieces to seeing the swapping of palettes for changes in the mapped metric.

Beneath the big map, however, are two components also well worth the user’s attention. Perhaps deceptively simple, two sets of line charts, they add (again) context to the data. For example, while it is great to see life expectancy in the United States improving, when you compare that to the rest of the developed world, we are falling behind.

Overall a solid piece.

Credit for the piece goes to Patterson Clark, Kennedy Elliott, and Katie Park.

Mapping Hepatitis vs HIV

I don’t often write about maps, especially of the choropleth kind. In many cases I choose not to because so many of the maps are one-dimensional: how fast is x growing across the world; which is predominant across the world, y or z? So I was pleasantly surprised by the Economist yesterday when they published this interactive map on the scourges of hepatitis and HIV.

Hepatitis vs HIV
Hepatitis vs HIV

Quickly put, the map is a success. It shows a clear geographic pattern; the developed/Western world along with the Middle East and Asia have a larger problem in hepatitis than HIV whereas Africa and Latin America are dealing moreso with HIV. (Admittedly, the fact that 117 out of 187 countries are dealing more with hepatitis is lost because so many of the countries are small in area.) But, the really nice bit about the map is not just the colour by virus, but the tint by comparative ratio. The darker the colour, the stronger the one virus over the other.

Lastly, from a data perspective, I just wonder if the ratios could not be adjusted for population, or deaths as a percentage of the national population? I would be curious to see if that would yield interesting results.

Credit for the piece goes to C.H., R.L.W., J.S., and D.H.