politics – Page 26 – Coffee Spoons

Paying a Bribe

Some say bribes grease the wheels of business. But if that is the case, where are the greasiest wheels? This interactive piece from the BBC showcases an interesting story. It maps who has paid bribes and the value thereof. Then it looks at corruption in the different sectors of the country and which is perceived to be the most corrupt.

Aesthetically this is not the finest piece. Some of the most interesting countries to view are in Africa and Southeast Asia, i.e. geographies near the equator. Unfortunately the designers here chose a map projection that emphasises Siberia and Arctic Canada at the expense of those very countries. Also, where did Greenland go? I know that the ice is melting, but I don’t think it’s melted that quickly. Furthermore, if the user clicks the “List” option, he or she is presented only with a list of geographies. None of them are selectable nor do they encode data. So why is the list there?

In short, the interface is a bit clunky and strangely designed. Line lengths are too long and it looks ugly. But, there are two interesting things going on here worth noting. First the legend here actually does not just show the range for the choropleth, but it also encodes the number of countries that fall within that range.

Second, by clicking on a particular bin for the legend, the map filters for the selection. I think that from a design perspective, a lighter grey and a lighter stroke outline would have made the filtering a bit more prominent, but the idea is interesting. Unfortunately, I found no way of easily returning to an all-bin view of the map.

A piece for the BBC that misses a few, but also hits a few.

Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics team.

Hunger Strikes

Guantanamo Bay and the US military prison there almost always spark a debate. For some months now, prisoners have been staging a hunger strike. Increasingly, however, the strike is garnering attention not for itself, but for the US military’s treatment of the prisoners in force feeding them. The National Post looked at just how this is being done in this infographic. Pay particular attention to the illustration of the tube, which is drawn to actual size.

Force feeding Guantanamo's striking prisoners — Force feeding Guantanamo’s striking prisoners

Credit for the piece goes to Andrew Barr, Mike Faille, and Richard Johnson.

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

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

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

But Can You Do the Gerrymander?

It’s Friday. And that means you will likely be contorting on the dance floor this weekend. But if you tried to bend to conform to any of these congressional districts, you would likely break your back. Gerrymandering is an old practice that basically allows state governments to decide what area (and therefore populations) belong to which congressional district. If you carve up your opposition well enough, you can consolidate them into far fewer districts than they might otherwise win. Pennsylvania is just one such example of an unbalanced state. This interactive infographic game from Slate forces you to solve the jigsaw puzzle of congressional districts.

Credit for the piece goes to Chris Kirk.

Women Bankers

…and not just any bankers but central bankers (the ones who establish policies at a national level), are rather under represented as this graphic from the Economist details. It is a nice use of small multiples with bar charts over time. Each bar is a 0–50% of the total membership of a central bank board and the share that is dark represents the number of women. Clearly for the countries selected not a single one has had a board of more than 50% women. Sweden and South Africa are the only two countries shown that have had 50% participation from women central bankers—though Norway and Denmark (for a period of time) have been consistently close.

Credit for the piece goes to C.W., P.A.W., L.P., and P.K.

Riding the Rails

A little while ago the Washington Post published this graphic on Metro ridership. But not just anybody’s ridership, that of the individuals who sit on the DC transit agency’s board. After all, should not those overseeing Washington’s transit agency be intimately familiar with the conditions faced by DC commuters?

How agency board members ride their transit agency…

The graphic is a really nice use of small multiples and shading and tinting to indicate which lines are travelled by specific persons. An icon of a bus denotes bus ridership. This is a very good piece.

Credit for the piece goes to Wilson Andrews, Dana Hedgpeth, Mark Berman, and Luz Lazo.

Whip Counts to Authorise Force in Syria

I was catching up on some news tonight and I came upon an unhelpful graphic that was supposed to be helping me understand the whip count (who is voting yes or no) for authorising the use of force in Syria. Below is the original graphic from Think Progress.

The whip count as of 15.30 on 3 September

I struggled, however, to directly compare the yes and no votes. While I certainly understand that the splits within both parties are a fascinating subplot to the greater issue of will we bomb Syria, the traditional congressional arc visualisation is not helpful here. So using the same numbers, I simply plotted what is essentially a stacked bar chart. In truly heretical, i.e. independent, fashion I mixed the two parties together and placed them at either ends of the chart. The first to reach 50% wins. (If I were updating this live of course.)

Credit for the original goes to Igor Volsky and Judd Legum.

Ye Olde Boston Mayoral Candidate Map

A map? Again? I know. But trust me, this one is interesting. For those of you who do not know, Boston’s Thomas Menino is not running for reelection this year. By the time he leaves office, he will have been the mayor of Boston for over twenty years and so this year is the first open election in a long, long time.

So what’s better than graphics for election-related data? Graphics with a medieval/Renaissance/fiefdom aesthetic, that’s what. With a little bit of fun, the Boston Globe mapped out the local areas of strength for the 12 candidates for mayor. The residence of each is denoted by a castle keep while areas of strength, location of donors, and key voting areas are signified in different colours. And the map’s background? Well, you can see for yourself.

Credit for the piece goes to Alvin Chang, Andrew Ryan, Javier Zarracina, and Matt Carroll.

Elections in Mali

For those of you who did not know, the country of Mali held elections yesterday and results should be forthcoming. Those of you who regularly read or semi-frequently check my blog, you are likely familiar with the work I did covering the French-led intervention in Mali. I am a bit busy working on some other projects, so I did not have the time to prepare a graphic for the election as I had hoped. Nor did many others. Alas, the only graphic I have come upon is from Al Jazeera. And it is a mess.

That map only shows the provinces; the colours signify nothing. Nor is there any context for the factettes on the side. And while perhaps the intention was to show Mali in a snapshot, I think a piece about the challenges facing Mali could delve a bit into forecasted statistics. I credit the team behind the project with attempting to cover the story, but aside from biographies on the four leading candidates and overviews of the main militant groups, the piece lacks depth and substance.

Ultimately, after looking at the work, I am left wanting more. A lot more.

Credit for the piece goes to Alia Chughtai and Jacob Powell.

Senate Facebook

Partisanship in Washington has only grown worse over time. So how better to track that than through Facebook-like network analysis diagrams?

If you look at senators who voted with other senators at least 50% of the time and at least 75% of the time, and compare those numbers to numbers over a decade ago, you can see there is a lot less bipartisanship in 2013.

Compare 2013…

to 2001.

Sad but fascinating.

Credit for the piece goes to Chris Wilson.