Negative Partisanship Works in American Elections, but Whom Will It Help the Most in 2022?

June 2022
Project Prompt
The Morning Consult Washington desk approached the Data Viz team with a request featuring peculiar data - graph perceptions members of a political party have of the opposing party.
My Approach
Create an informative landing page that would be appealing to young adults in the Houston-area, which has a notorious history of ridiculous Congressional district boundaries.
Detail of chart I created for Morning Consult, 2022.
Tools Used
  • Illustrator
  • Microsoft PowerPoint
  • Excel
Collaborators
Awards
Context

In early June 2022, Cameron Easley and Eli Yokley approached the Data Visualization team with a series of data sets based on a uniquely written survey.

Respondents of the survey were asked to:

  • Quantify ideology by placing themselves, the two parties and their respective votes on a 1-7 point ideological scale ("1" = "very liberal", "4" = "moderate", "7" = "very conservative")
  • Indicate if they agreed or disagreed with a list of roughly 20 statements. Then, the survey asked members of the opposite party to estimate the share of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents who believed in the statements provided to gauge how close Americans of opposite political persuasions are to understanding their rivals' beliefs.

Our team was tasked in finding a way to chart actuals vs. perceptions as well as highlight the gaps between Independents and the two major parties on certain subjects.

Companion chart by Sara Holcombe
Additional charts by Sam Elbouez

With such a large data set containing incredibly nuanced concepts that could be easily misunderstood, our team saw the value in delegating a set of charts to each designer. Generally, one designer is assigned to a deliverable to ensure visual consistency within a piece. With multiple designers working on one deliverable, we devised a set of guidelines specific to this piece in order to create cohesion and uniformity amongst the pieces. This also included the decision to display paired charts as tabbed content blocks to allow for easy comparison along with keeping page length down while still displaying larger images.

Democrats' views vs. perceptions
Republicans' views vs. perceptions

I was tasked with creating a chart that showed the perceived and actual agreement to statements with the political party respondents present on one plot.
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Since the core function of the chart was comparison, I felt a dot chart was the best format because it effectively shows the space between each group.
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The biggest challenge was devising a way to effectively distinguish the perceived agreement dots against the dots representing actual agreement. Part of my process was thinking about tropes and common imagery used to indicate thought or something uncertain. I continually contemplated comic strips and the use of thought bubbles vs dialogue bubbles, in particular the use of outlined circles that lead to the thought bubble itself. I used that outlined circle or donut to indicate the estimated share as it is based on a person's thought on another individual's agreement or belief.

Mock up of how my charts are displayed on the Morning Consult website.

The piece was very successful by being featured in several news programs as well as our visualizations being longlisted for an Information is Beautiful Award.

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