Its Friday, time for another poll.

This weeks topic is inspired from a discussion Jordan started in our forums (#).
What is your favorite feature of Excel?
I will go first.
My favorite features are,
- Conditional formatting: Quickly highlight something that is not alright (or meets conditions), see trends with data bars or heat maps.
- Pivot tables: Turn data in to understandable information with just a few clicks. When combined with slicers & conditional formats, becomes very powerful.
- Formulas: Ofcourse, with out formulas, Excel would be a glorified notepad!
What about you? What are your favorite features in Excel? Go ahead and tell us by posting a comment.
PS: If you are reading this in our newsletter or RSS Reader, click here to share your favorite features.

















21 Responses to “Red vs. Blue – 35 Cool Visualizations on 2008 US Presidential Election”
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]
[...] post by WP-AutoBlog Import var AdBrite_Title_Color = '0000FF'; var AdBrite_Text_Color = '000000'; var [...]
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/
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.
[...] Haired Dilbert has some pretty cool visualizations for the ‘08 Election featured on his blog. I really liked this [...]
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!
@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.
[...] Check the rest out here. [...]
[...] 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 [...]
[...] 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 … [...]
[...] Aqui pode igualmente encontrar uma compilação de 35 [...]
[...] 35 Cool Visualizations on 2008 US Presidential Election - Obama vs. McCain [...]
[...] Also see these 35 visualizations from on Obama vs. McCain in US Polls. [...]
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!
@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.
Thanks for your help!
[...] 35 Cool Visualizations on 2008 US Presidential Election - Obama vs…. [...]
@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.
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.
[...] 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 [...]
ts not cool or notx