Does my new chart make sense?

[ciphergoth]

Imagine for a moment that it's 2:30 AM London time on November 5th and like me, you've stayed up late to watch the US elections. Six states have been called so far: Vermont and Virginia for Obama, and Indiana, Georgia, South Carolina and Kentucky for McCain. You go to my election page and see this diagram:

Does it make sense to you? How could I improve it?

thanks!

Update: wow, a flood of very helpful comments, thanks so much, keep them coming!

Comments

[robot-mel.livejournal.com]

Is the line in the middle how many votes for the college they need to win? Also it'd be good to see the difference between suspected and confirmed. (Or am I just missing that?)

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

States that haven't been called are in the middle; those that have are at the edges. Or do you mean something different?

[robot-mel.livejournal.com]

It's not obvious, as you'd have to know who'd called in to know where to stop looking. I think it'd be better if you could get that information from the chart.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

There are two other ways it's indicated in the chart: white lines separate the called from the uncalled, and a lower bar is followed by a higher bar. However, from several comments here it sounds like a stronger indicator is needed...

[robot-mel.livejournal.com]

Ah, the lines didn't quite match up with what you said, and I wasn't sure if they were just noise, perhaps make them more definied.

[robot-mel.livejournal.com]

It was the Oklamhoma on the right that you didn't mention being included that was which confused me.

[fizzyboot.livejournal.com]

Thnat bit was obvious to me. But why is Virginia red if Obama won it? That doesn't make sense.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Because Bush won it in 2004, so Obama has claimed a red state.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

That wasn't clear to me either, and threw me off in trying to work out which were the called and which were the uncalled states, so I definitely think it would be helpful to have a different indicator for that. Once you have that, I think the white lines may be sufficient to indicate called vs. uncalled - I thought that was what they meant before I noticed Virginia in red, but then I got very confused and starting doubting whether I was interpreting any of the chart correctly at all.

[clarisinda.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I thought that too. Perhaps put the confirmed results in a brighter colour or something?