Roger pointed me at this site, and it’s amazing: http://bost.ocks.org/mike/. It is a series of visualizations by Mike Bostock. Boy are they pretty.
I’d like to highlight a couple of my favorites which could most definitely be considered political eye candy. The little snippets of the graphic I’m showing are just to wet your appetite, you really should click through because all of these graphics are interactive, and I promise you’ll discover something you didn’t already know. (Note these are linking to the New York Times site, which will let you look at 10 articles for free per month.)
The first is “Over the Decades, How the States Have Shifted“, published on the fantastic FiveThirtyEight blog (yes I have a total math crush on Nate Silver, who doesn’t?). This interactive graphic shows how each state has voted, most shifting from red to blue (or vice versa) at least once in the last 50 years.
The next is “How the Tax Burden Has Changed” a look at the “share of yearly income paid in federal, state and local taxes, by income bracket” since 1980. This graphic is great because it shows total revenue from each wage category, percentages, and how they have changed over the last 30 odd years. You’ll see everyone’s taxes are lower now then they were in the mid 1990s, but different wage brackets have had very different ups and downs over the years.
Next up, “How Obama Won Re-election“, which is a whole series of graphics. This screen shot really doesn’t do the animated graphic, showing how much counties shifted right or left in 2012, and also 2008 (be sure to look at both!).
And finally, “At the National Conventions, the Words They Used” a clever word cloud, comparing how much certain words were used at the two national conventions. First, you know I love word clouds. Second, with all the different liberal events and conservative events I’ve attended over the last few years, I’ve become more aware of the code words used on each side. This graphic does a great job showing what some of those words are.
To really gorge/waste a huge chunk of time, just dive right in to http://bost.ocks.org/mike/example/
Thank you Mike! You are an inspiration.
About BillTrack50 – BillTrack50 offers free tools for citizens to easily research legislators and bills across all 50 states and Congress. BillTrack50 also offers professional tools to help organizations with ongoing legislative and regulatory tracking, as well as easy ways to share information both internally and with the public.