voting

I’ve decided to follow up to my recent Close Races post. My last chart in that post was a dot plot, and the lines were dark enough to detract from the plotted points (below left). I’ve lightened the lines (below right) to reduce this effect, while keeping the lines to help viewers trace the series. The lighter lines seem to help a bit. I’ve also replaced the teal/cyan (hard to view”) with a plum shade for Clinton.

[Read more…] about Close Races 2

In Close Races, Kaiser of Junk Charts writes about the “racetrack” charts used in the New York Times to compare candidates’ performances in different demographic categories. Specifically, the charts compare votes received by Clinton and Obama in cities, suburban regions, and rural areas. The New York Times charts are donut charts, or pie charts with different circumferential bands representing the different demographic regions. A portion of the New York Times chart is shown here:

I got this chart from Kaiser’s post, and he got it from a “recent issue of New York Times magazine”. The problems with this kind of chart have been described in Kaiser’s recent post as well as earlier posts on the Junk Charts blog. The problems stem from the data being depicted as angular measures, when the relative arc length and area of the ring segments varies greatly even for segments with similar angles. [Read more…] about Close Races