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Red vs. Blue – 35 Cool Visualizations on 2008 US Presidential Election

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With 2008 US Presidential elections around the corner everyone is busy including chart makers. There are hundreds of excellent visualizations on the presidential election campaign, speeches, issues, predictions that keeping track of what is best can be a tough task. We at PHD have compiled a list of 35 totally awesome visualizations on the 2008 election. Do check these to get more insights in to this election.

The visualizations are grouped in to these categories:

  • Campaigns & Speeches
  • Projections
  • Primaries & Caucuses
  • Other Politics
  • Trivia & Fun Facts

Like this list? Browse other cool visualizations here.

Visualizations on Campaigns & Speeches

Article References to Obama & McCain

How many articles are referring to Obama and McCain

Donations Made to Political Candidates

Donations received by each candidate. The blue semi-circles in the center describe the size of the overall donations by both Obama and McCain. The lines indicate the amount of donation made.

Anatomy of Speech – Barack Obama’s Acceptance Speech at DNC

Presentation Zen takes a look at Obama’s acceptance speech at DNC and compares it with a symphony.

Wordtree – Obama Speaks at DNC

Obama’s speech, the word “WE” in a word tree.

Sarah Palin in VP Debates – Wordle Tag Cloud

Look at what Palin spoke in the VP debates recently, in a word cloud. More Wordle clouds : McCain, Obama @ DNC, Obama vs. King – the speeches I have a Dream vs. More Perfect Union

Marginal Taxes – Obama vs. McCain

How each candidates taxation policies effects the marginal taxes.

Campaign Finances – Breakup

Break up of campaign finance information by NY Times.

Tax Plans – McCain vs. Obama

How the tax plans of Obama and McCain are going to impact you?

Campaign Finances – Breakup

Campaign finances information visualization by BBC

Ad Spending

This info-graphic shows which candidate is spending how much in each state in advertising. Looks like Obama beat McCain hands down in most states as far as ad spending is concerned.

Candidate Visits to Each State

This visualization by CNN shows us how many times each candidate has visited each of the 50 states since the campaign has began. You can see that swing states have attracted unusually large amounts visits compared pre-decided states.

Issues and Agendas, What is their Stance?

This stacked chart shows how much each candidate has given preference to the various issues like health care, taxation etc.

Visualizations on 2008 US Presidential Elections – Projections & Polls

Vote Prediction Tracker – US Electoral College

Intrade – 2008 Electoral Projections

2008 Election Projections

Pollster – View & Analyze Polls

Perspctv – another Election Tracking Site

Presidential Watch – what various websites are saying

The Economist’s pole – Economists prefer Obama over McCain

NYTimes – Poll Tracker

Gallup poll tracker…

Google Maps Projections Tracker

Cartogram of Projections

Primaries & Caucuses

Who names who – Debates leading to Iowa Caucuses

This interactive visualization takes a look at the speeches made during primaries and caucuses and tells us who is naming who.

How they voted in primaries ? – Clinton vs. Obama

This brilliant visualization provides very good analysis of how people voted in democratic primaries.

Visualizations on Trivia & Fun Facts

The Measure of a President – NY Times

The height and weight of presidential candidates since the 1896.

Obama vs. McCain – Google Search Insights

Who is searched more? Obama or McCain, now you can find it with Google Search Insights

Compare Political Quotes – Google Labs

Compare quotations made by candidates on various issues.

Red vs. Blue – Popularity of Books – Amazon

Amazon plots their book sales data to show which states are reading what wrt. political orientation.

Presidential Demographics

This interactive chart shows the life of each president and when he became the White house inhabitant. A fun way to look at who got the opportunity very early and who waited long.

Amazon Halloween Mask Sales – Obama vs. McCain

Can Halloween mask sales predict who is going to be next president. Amazon has built a meter for us to track who is selling more masks – Obama or McCain. Looks like Obama is leading here.

Party Head Quarters

Want to findout more about party head quarters in each city / state? This google maps application is perfect for trivia mongers.

Visualizations on Other Politics

who voted No to the $ 700 Bn Bailout Plan

The NY Times interactive graphic tells the story behind the initial NO vote for the $ 700 Bn bailout package.

How republican and democratic senators voted in 2007

Another look at how both republicans and democrats voted in 2007, you can see why McCain calls him self a maverick. He is the only one not connected to the republican network.

National Debt by Political Party

This graph shows US National Debt by in years since 1975. The bars are colored based on the ruling political party at that time.

Bonus Visualizations – For Fun

Palinworld – New Yorker coverpage

A humorous take by New Yorker on how Palin Sees the world form her home

What your vote helps determine – PHD Comics

PHD Comics takes a look at the irony of what each vote determines.

So which one(s) do you like better?

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21 Responses to “Red vs. Blue – 35 Cool Visualizations on 2008 US Presidential Election”

  1. [...] post by WP-AutoBlog Import var AdBrite_Title_Color = '0000FF'; var AdBrite_Text_Color = '000000'; var [...]

  2. Impressive list, though a few of these clearly qualify as junk (the second one with the hairy circle segments, for example).

    Also, that McCain vs. Obama tax plan comparison is wildly distorted, for a debunking and redesign see here: http://chartjunk.karmanaut.com/taxplans/

  3. Tony Rose says:

    Holy information/data overload. There are some great visualizations here, but also that are not so good. This list may have been better in small chunks.

  4. [...] Haired Dilbert has some pretty cool visualizations for the ‘08 Election featured on his blog. I really liked this [...]

  5. Michael Wilson says:

    Cool list!
    I know another widget that might have your interest.
    It shows the progression of polls and uses data from electoral-vote.com.

    I think you might like it:-)
    http://www.youcalc.com/apps/1221747067033

    ... and its easy to put on your blog and fits in your sidebar!

    Make a difference, keep on voting!

  6. Chandoo says:

    @Robert .. Agree, few of the charts are not really great. thanks for link, I have updated the post with the link.

    @Tony ... That was the point. I wanted to compile a huge list with all the visualizations worth a look.

    @Michael .. Welcome to PHD blog 🙂 thanks for sharing that link.

  7. [...] has progressed. With one look you can see on what issues candidates debated most. Also see these 35 different visualizations on 2008 US Elections [via Information [...]

  8. [...] Red vs. Blue - 35 Cool Visualizations on 2008 US Presidential Election Perspctv - another Election Tracking Site. Presidential Watch - what various websites are saying. The Economist’s pole - Economists prefer Obama over McCain. NYTimes - Poll Tracker. Gallup poll tracker… Google Maps Projections Tracker … [...]

  9. [...] 35 Cool Visualizations on 2008 US Presidential Election - Obama vs. McCain [...]

  10. Brock says:

    First let me say that I love this blog. I have been scouring the Internet and more than likely overlooking the obvious. Can someone lead me to the OFFICIAL source of elections results? I am looking for voter data by county or even town if possible.

    The reason I ask is because on Boston.com, they listed the results by town, and have to assume that there is an offical source.

    Anyway, any help you can provide will be greatly appreciated!

  11. Chandoo says:

    @Brock: Thank you so much. I guess fec.gov should put up the results as soon as all counties report the results officially. I dont know but I guess it should take a few days before the data is compiled and released to public.

    Alternatively did you see what nytimes.com has to offer? They have a county level breakup of results and majority figures in visualization form.

  12. Brock says:

    Thanks for your help!

  13. Chandoo says:

    @Brock: You can get the data from USAToday site : http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/president.htm

    just scroll down and select the state name to see its county results in tabular form.

  14. Brock says:

    Thanks again. I also stumbled upon this. http://general-election-2008-data.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/json/votes/2008/. It appears as if there was a Google project with the data. I do not know a web programming language, but I am sure there is an easy way to catch the data and put it into a database.

  15. [...] to give a deeper insight into the elections. A top 35 of those visualizations are listed in the Chandoo.org website. B. Shneiderman’s very interesting network analysis of the Senatorial voting patterns is [...]

  16. asdj says:

    ts not cool or notx

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