#498

Infographics and the Election

So, despite this elections rather depressing outcome, I would like to spend a moment looking at two sites and their display of the election results.

NYT Screenshot CNN Screenshot

I had to crop away the header of CNN, due to some weird advertising they were doing, which broke my screenshot extension.

Anyway, I find these two sites interesting. They both display the same information (well, I screen shoted the CA election in one and the Senate in the other). The New York Times is the better designed one though, in my opinion. Why you may ask? Two reasons. First look at how CNN represents the winner of a race. They have a check mark, but it's hard to tell that it associated with either name, because it is in the same place for every election. Also it is visuall separated from the actual names. The only notification that the check mark is associated with any name at all is that the order of the names changes depending on who won.

The NYT does two things better than CNN, and I think it makes it a far better display of information. The first is how the deal with the winner. They highlight the winner, and a check mark, in the color of their party. This way, even zoomed out you can get an idea of which party is winning. Also, the NYT provides an up-to-date textual analysis of the election data to the left. This textual evaluation is really useful because while data is important, analysis of data is what we, the populous care about.

Anyway, I know that wasn't much, but I kind of wanted to share.

Hasta,
/Nat