Tag: politics

  • Super Tuesday Time

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    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    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…

  • Iowa Caucus Results by Demographic Types

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    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    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…

  • The Iowa Caucuses

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    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    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…

  • If the Government Were a Household

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    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    One of the things that irritates me about when people complain about government spending is the comparison against household budgeting. The two are very different. I mean on the surface, I suppose yes, both have income and both spend on stuff and services. But, to put it all in context there is this nice piece…

  • Trump’s Poll Ratings

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    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    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…

  • The Relative Value of Republican Primary Votes

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    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    The day after Election Day—no, not that Election Day—we take a look at a nice scatter plot from FiveThirtyEight. They explore how an eventual conservative candidate, whoever that may be, will face a structural challenge. There are slightly more delegates at play in blue states than red. And typically those blue Republicans are “less religious,…

  • Paul Ryan is Your New Speaker

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    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    Paul Ryan is about to takeover for John Boehner as Speaker of the House. So the Washington Post put together a nice graphic-featuring article about how Ryan compares to previous speakers—turns out he is fairly young. But the end of the piece uses this graphic to look at the number of days, i.e. experience, each…

  • English Votes for English Laws

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Last week the British government announced plans to solve the West Lothian Question that centres on devolution parity for England. Many legislative powers have been devolved from London and given to the regional parliaments in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. And on the one hand that is great as the national parliament no longer tells…

  • Trump Leads the Pack

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    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    The day after the Canadian elections, let’s turn our gaze back upon the states via this Washington Post piece. How are the Republicans doing in their primaries? Yep, still the land of I can’t quite believe it. Credit for the piece goes to the Washington Post graphics department.

  • The Canadian Elections

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    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    Canada held an election yesterday. For your briefing on it, John Oliver did a great job on Last Week Tonight. But for the serious coverage, we have results. Here we have the results coverage by the National Post. It’s your standard choropleth coloured by the victor in each riding, or constituency. From a design side,…