DailyViz » politics

Visualizing Torture through Legos

admin — Wed, 06 May 2009 02:01:10 +0000

Legofesto is a self-described “political junkie news hound,” who, according to Wired, is “fed up with news outlets refusing to publish images depicting torture due to their graphic nature.” To combat this “irresponsible censorship,” he started making Lego depictions based on news stories and first-hand accounts of torture. Legofesto’s posts include waterboarding, the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protest, and Guantanamo Bay

Republican Decline

admin — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:56:11 +0000

Pollster.com has produced a chart of party self-identification with six national polls since September 1.

Nate Silver has commentary, as well as an earlier post showing the same general trend.

Kristen Soltis also presents data of young voters’ (18-29) party self-identification based on exit polls from presidential elections in 1972 to 2008. Contrary to public opinion, party identification among young voters appears to follow general trends (they’re not, say, overwhelmingly Democratic, contrary to popular opinion). There does appear to be a 5-point swing in the past two elections, though, with the vanishing of young republicans.

Divided States

admin — Sat, 02 May 2009 18:37:49 +0000

Russian professor Igor Panarin has been predicting the end of the U.S. in 2010 for the last decade. He claims that mass immigration, economic decline and moral degradation will lead to civil war, the collapse of the dollar, and the breakup of the U.S. into six regional states that will join or be controlled by foreign powers.

Death Penalty Roundup

admin — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 03:03:15 +0000

GOOD has an infographic of death row worldwide. The United States is one of 59 countries that still executes its citizens on a regular basis

Splitting Up Texas

admin — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 13:57:29 +0000

Nate Silver has taken the secession talk seriously—well, as seriously as possible. Texas can’t actually secede from the U.S., but it can subdivide. Nate has drawn up five states along county boundaries based on political and demographic characteristics. For a full description of each, see http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/04/messing-with-texas.html.

Shift in Cuban-American Opinion

admin — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:39:58 +0000

A poll released Monday by Bendixen & Associates shows a dramatic shift in attitudes among Cuban-Americans, with 67% supporting the removal of all travel restrictions to Cuba. As the New York Times reports, Bendixen attributes this change to Obama’s recent policy announcement last week. Presidential approval ratings among Cuban-Americans haven’t been this high since the mid-1980s.

Legalizing Marijuana

admin — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 23:18:26 +0000

According to recent polls, an increasing number of Americans favor legalizing marijuana—41% (CBS/NYT), 44% (Gallup, below). This is a drastic increase from 12% in 1969 and 24% in 1979.

Nate Silver hypothesizes that the shift is due to the large number of people under 55 who have used marijuana in their lifetimes. He presents the following data from a 2007 survey conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration:

Class Consciousness on the Rise?

admin — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:40:47 +0000

A new Rasmussen Reports poll shows that only 53% of American adults think capitalism is better than socialism (20% favor socialism, and 27% don’t know). As Nate Silver points out, there’s very little basis for comparison with this survey, so it’s hard to make any predictions about trends. Nate also provides the crosstab data for different income brackets, which is the most interesting part of the results. Those in the lowest income brackets favor capitalism by only 8 points, and capitalism has a 57-point lead only among the wealthiest Americans.

Live Piracy Map

admin — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:15:32 +0000

The ICC (International Chamber of Commerce) Commercial Crime Services brings us a live Google map with all attempted and suspected attacks, as well as “suspicious vessels.” Eat your heart out, Gothamist!

The Future of Same-Sex Marriage

admin — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:13:06 +0000

The Map Scroll has visually rendered Nate Silver’s predictions of when each state would vote against a same-sex marriage ban. (You all remember Nate as our election polls crack dealer last fall. FiveThirtyEight is still alive and predicting.)

Nate explains

It turns out that you can build a very effective model by including just three variables:

1. The year in which the amendment was voted upon;
2. The percentage of adults in 2008 Gallup tracking surveys who said that religion was an important part of their daily lives;
3. The percentage of white evangelicals in the state.
. . .
Unsurprisingly, there is a very strong correspondence between the religiosity of a state and its propensity to ban gay marriage, with a particular “bonus” effect depending on the number of white evangelicals in the state.

According to Nate’s model, Iowa, which has an average level of religiosity, would pass a ban today; by 2012, it should be a toss-up; and after 2013, any ban should be defeated.

And from Feminist Philosophers, an overview of same-sex marriage rights.

Nuclear Weapons Roundup

admin — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:05:04 +0000

This seemed timely, given the situation in North Korea. Also, there’s very awesome music here by Ratatat juxtaposed to otherwise scary content.