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

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

In this scenario, Virginia has been called.

Vertically it falls into three sections - states called for Obama, states not yet called, states called for McCain. The height of the bar shows how much they favour one candidate over the other, either in final results or projected results, and the bars are arranged in height order. Probabilities don't come into it.

Iowa is red because it Bush won it in 2004. Colours alternate just to make the diagram easier to read.

[andrewducker]

Ok - I think I have it now.

I think I'd separate it into two graphs - "called" and "uncalled" - otherwise there's too much visual information comign across in one place, and it's not at all easy to extract meaning unless you've seen one of these graphs recently (I've seen one before, but not recently).

[fizzyboot.livejournal.com]

No, just one graph is best, with the called Obama to the far left, the called McCain to the far right, and the undecided in the middle (which should have a bar down it). Then it's a lot easier to see how far they are from winning.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

The middle does have a bar down it, going through New Hampshire.

[andrewducker]

Not on my screen it doesn't. I have a white line between Virginia and Washington (with some unreadably small text on it) but that's it.