Pretty Politicking
Hilary Spencer
Tuesday, 29 January 2008 03:08 UTC
A beautiful interactive graph by the NY Times shows which politicians are referencing (attacking?) others during the debates leading up to the Iowa caucuses. The surprise (or maybe it’s not a surprise) is Hillary Clinton.
The design style is reminiscent of Circos, originally designed for the visualization of genetic data. The NY Times had previously featured Circos in January 2007 in an article on comparative genomics. (Sorry the thumbnail isn’t quite the right image, but it gives you an idea of what Circos looks like)
Does the Circos technique work as well for visualizing conversations/debates as comparing genomes? I think the interactivity (rollovers) in the NYTimes are a nice enhancement since they allow for exploration and (visual) simplification of the data. The Circos diagrams are gorgeous, but a little difficult to examine / parse due to their complexity.
Updated 30 January 2008 19:24 UTC
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Replies
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So they are all talking about Mrs Clinton, but all the other candidates are being talked about only by a subset of others, is that the point? Is this total number of references, or is it filtered for nice/nasty?
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I think the lines illustrate the total number of references, and the percentage of the circumference occupied by each candidate represents the percentage of the debates they spent talking. For me, this visualization clearly illustrates the surprising fact that both Democrats and Republicans were talking (a lot) about Mrs. Clinton. In comparison, only Democrats were talking about/to Bill Richardson and Joe Biden, and only Republicans were talking about/to Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson.
Since this is before the primaries, when each candidate is mainly facing competition from other members of the same party (and presumably seeking to differentiate themselves from their party’s other representatives), it’s interesting to see that Republicans are already addressing Mrs. Clinton. I wonder if this is because they see her as more of a threat and therefore needing to preemptively attack her before the actual race (thereby suggesting that they think she will get the nomination), if it is a way of mobilizing their supporters, or if something else is going on.
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Fascinating! Well, good luck to her. I think she’s the strongest presidential candidate from what I’ve read so far. Your interpretation could well be right, but it could also perhaps be an effect that she is the most well-known candidate? (Maybe she’s only the most well-known outside the US, though.)
My twopennorth is that the Americans en masse are not ready to see past gender and hence have a woman president, though, so I doubt she’ll actually get in. (Also Mr Obama for similar reasons.) But this is a UK perspective—I’d be happy to be proved wrong in the event.
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I think that Maxine hit the nail on the head – Clinton is the best known politician and is therefore a big target. She also represents the previous Democratic establishment (The Clinton presidency) that was so hated by so many Republicans.
With the Democratic nomination most definitely going to either a woman or an African-American, I don’t see a female or black president as being far-fetched. Unfortunately for both of them, it happens to be in a year when the Republicans may very well choose the only candidate on their side with cross-party appeal and also admirable to independents. I find it hard to believe that Romney would be chosen by anyone in the middle or on the fence. From the Democratic side, although it is now cliché, it is definitely true that Clinton is a polarizing figure, leaving Obama to carry the mantle of “cross-party appeal.”
In my opinion, McCain vs. Obama would be a truly fantastic presidential run, with both being more natural “unitors”, and therefore attracting a similar type of middle-ground voter.
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That is a fascinating graph and it brings to mind a discussion I heard on the Kojo Nnamdi show today with guest Carol Gilligan who talked about how Clinton has this gender handicap (my word, not hers) of having everything she says or does put through a filter (her word)...a woman can’t show any emotion or she’s a hysterical female, and if she shows no emotion she’s a calculating bitch, and so on. A woman cannot win in that game. I am not a fan of Clinton but on this I have a little bit of sympathy for her as I deal with this issue every day in the workplace – I’m the only female in my office and I see “hysterical” males around me regularly who fully accept each other’s hysterical behavior but would scorn me to no end if I did the same. This gender filter could account for a good chunk of why there have been so many references to Clinton by name.
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And oops, that does not address anything about the content of your post, sorry about that. But thanks for listening! :)
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What a fantastic visualization – thank you for posting this!
Most of the time I feel like flash-based interactive infographics on the web end up being a waste of space (i.e. could better be accomplished through some other, more portable medium like still images or video) but this one truly shows the reader something different.
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I think that complicated diagrams, such as graphs with lots of edges, can really benefit from minimal interactivity such as rollovers, especially when the rollover allows for visual simplification (highlights/fades?) Flash (and Java, and to a certain extent, JS/AJaX) allows for this, while images and video don’t.
I’d love to see some examples of bad flash infographics. Perhaps a new forum thread?
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OK, posting a new thread on bad infographics / flash presently…
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