Visualizations in The Study of American Voting Behavior

In the field of American voting behavior, the use of creative visualizations is an untapped resource. Rarely do researchers use innovative images to help tell their story. Instead, researchers in this field tend to rely on traditional visualizations like scatter plots and histograms. The three sets of images presented here help illustrate a few examples of how researchers of American voting behavior have used innovative visualizations to help inform their viewers.

The first collection of maps, “2008 Presidential Election Results,” uses visualizations to tell a very compelling story. Mark Newman shows how the traditional election results map, simply cast in red if the majority of a state’s population voted for the Republican candidate and blue if the majority of a state’s population voted for the Democratic candidate, is misleading.He argues that by not taking into consideration the distribution of population, the map appears that the Republican candidate should have won the election. Using a cartogram to rescale the size of a state according to its population, the rescaled election results map tells a completely different story. Newman also uses a cartogram at the county level to reveal, once again, how the traditional results map is misleading. This collection of visualizations is extremely useful, because they help tell a story that words alone would not sufficiently describe. The images reveal information in a clear and concise manner and without even reading the article, observers would understand Newman’s argument.

The second set of maps, however, are not extremely useful. In their article “The Republicans Should Pray for Rain: Weather, Turnout, and Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections,” Gomez, Hansford, and Krause argue that rain on Election Day depresses turnout, which then helps Republican candidates win elections. The only images they use to help tell their story are two maps of the United States. In the first map, they show the distribution of precipitation on the Election Day with the least amount of rain. In the second map, they show the distribution of precipitation on the Election Day with the most rain. These two images are not particularly informative, because they are not providing the reader with any insight that they could not have received without images. Furthermore, the images fail to connect turnout to rainfall, which is the very relationship the authors are interested in investigating.

The final map illustrates the distribution of access to the Fox News Network in 2000.Researchers Della Vigna and Kaplan are interested in investigating the effects of the entry of Fox News Network into the cable news line-up on voting behavior. They find that the Fox News Network “convinced” 3 to 28 percent of their viewers to vote for a Republican candidate. They use the map to illustrate which voters had access to the news network at the time of the 2000 General Presidential election. The map is useful, because it reveals which citizens had the option to watch Fox News, which then helps the viewer understand the demographics of the channel’s potential viewership. However, without the content of the article the image is not incredibly informative and doesn’t reveal the connection between vote decision and access to the network on its own.

Voting behavior specialists have underutilized innovative visualizations. Instead, they turn to traditional images like scatter plots, which were not displayed in this small collection of images, to help tell their stories. Although these traditional forms of visualizations are useful and informative, the potential for more creative visualizations has been underused. New technology and access to massive amounts of rich data allows researchers to tell their stories through informative, creative and easily readable images.

2008 Presidential Election Results

The following maps present the 2008 Presidential election results at both the state and county level. Most of you have seen the traditional mapping of the presidential election results where states whose population voted a majority Republican are painted red and states whose population voted a majority Democrat are painted blue.

This particular researcher adds a twist to these very common maps by taking into account the population size of the state or county. Mark Newman argues that the traditional maps are misleading because they do not account for each state or county's population size. In order to account for this discrepency, Newman makes cartograms of the election results at both the state and county level. These cartograms rescale the states or counties based on the size of their population. In other words, states with large populations appear geographically larger and vice versa.

By rescaling the states and counties by population size, viewers get a more accurate depiction of the distribution of votes for the 2008 Presidential Election.

Link to article: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008

Effects of Rain on Voter Turnout and Election Results

In the next article, Gomez, Hansford, and Krause are trying to illustrate the effects that weather has on voter turnout and election results. The argue that rainy weather depresses turnout and also helps Republican candidates.

The map posted below shows the distribution of rain on election day for elections with the least amount of rain and the most rain.

Link to article: http://myweb.fsu.edu/bgomez/GomezHansfordKrause_JOP_2007.pdf

Effects of Fox News Network on Vote Choice in the 2000 Presidential Election

In the third article, Della Vigna and Kaplan argue that the establishment of the Fox News Network impacted voting in 2000. They found that the Fox News Network "convinced" 3 to 28 percent of their viewers to vote Republican in 2000.

The following map illustrates the distribution of access to the Fox News Network in 2000.

Link to article: http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~sdellavi/wp/foxvote06-03-30.pdf