In this article we are providing 10 visualizations that your newsroom can use as a starting point to share your electoral insights in a simple way.
Since the whole world is watching the US election coming up on November 3rd, we decided to use US data as a theme for this post. The article is being written from an educational point of view and you can take it as a base for visualization of election results or any visualization project you are doing.
Who is winning the election?
Do you know the odds already? During election day there will definitely be data coming in giving you better indications.
The new slider function is really engaging for your readers. The below sample compares previous elections results with the predictions. Drag the slider and see which states is changing their votes. Unleash your creativity with this function.
The Gauge template is very simple to use as you just need one input field.
A single bar showing the actual votes for each candidate is also useful for your reader.
Parliament
The parliament template is ideal for showing the number of seats held by each political party. The chart comes with interactivity out of the box so your reader can hover the different parties to see the total number of seats. Also notice that when you hover over a value the other series will dim out. This is happening for accessibility reasons as it is easier to differentiate the selected party from the others.
Maps
Visualizing election data across geography allows your reader to understand the connection between political opinion and location.
The Category Map template can be used to show distinct colors based on values. For example to display which party won in each region/state:
Another map you can use for a similar use case, is the honeycomb map template for the USA:
Unit charts
Another way to highlight or compare some data pattern and trends is to use icons or symbols. Here is an example for the woman’s voting in the 2018 Midterm election
Bar charts
Bar charts are one of the most commonly used visualization types because they are simple to create and easy to understand.
Since your readers already know how to read them, it is a very powerful type to tell your story efficiently.
There are many use cases for covering election data using bar charts and here are two examples:
A stacked bar where the values add up to 100% is also something the readers can easily interpret and understand.
To learn more about some best practices for bar charts, check out this article
Line chart
Line charts work really well to visualize how data changes over time.
For instance if you want to show the race in the national polls:
Final notes:
Covering elections means that your data will change very frequently. If you connect your visualizations to a Google Spreadsheet, your published visuals will update automatically. Check out this video on how to connect to a live data source if you want to learn more.
