Second draft of chart

[ciphergoth]

I've incorporated some but not all of your suggestions - I don't quite have time to describe why I made the choices I did, I'll do that in a later post.

Remember, this is a made-up scenario to test how this might look during election night

Explanation

To make sense of any of this you must understand the Electoral College

Red states are states that went for Bush in 2004
Blue states are states that went for Kerry in 2004

States against a blue background at the top have been called for Obama
States against a red background at the bottom have been called for McCain
States inbetween have not been called.

States to the left of the line have gone to Obama or are projected to go for Obama
States to the right of the line have gone to McCain or are projected to go for McCain
The further left or right they extend, the further the (projected) margin of victory

The wider a state is, the more electoral votes it has.
The numbers inbetween states near the finish line mark how far that boundary is from the finish line.
The projected winner is the person who takes the state on the finish line.
Once the area for states called for one person or another crosses the finish line, the election as a whole can be called for them.

Each state also carries a code such as "CA (55) 18%", which means that CA (California) has 55 electoral votes and is projected to go for Obama by a margin of 18%.

I know the red/blue state thing caused a lot of confusion but it's dead important to the pol junkies, so I've just put it right at the top of the explanation! It also makes the chart prettier - more colourful :-)

Comments

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I find this much clearer and more intuitive - thanks! Now that it's clearer which states are called for Obama, I think the red for Virginia is also less troubling, although of course it's difficult to judge whether that's just because I read the comments on the previous post. Just one small FYI: in Google Chrome, the red background for McCain's called states is almost indistinguishable from the black background above it, at least for me. It may be my eyes doing something weird that other people's don't do, but at first glance I read this as no states being called for McCain. When I realised that couldn't be right and looked again, I saw it correctly, but when I glanced back at the chart while typing this comment, it started looking as if every state from Texas down was called for McCain - possibly some sort of optical illusion linked to the size of the red area for Texas? Obviously you can't change that, but there may be a better shade of red, or even pink, that would avoid the problem, assuming it's Not Just Me. The blue for Obama's called states is lovely and clear :-)

[simont]

Whereas I find the red background clearly visible but the blue one a bit dim (just to be contrary). Perhaps just reinstating the dividing line in each case would help show up the contrast?

I like all the changes, though. Vertical format definitely an improvement, backgrounds for the called states a good idea regardless of quibbles over the precise RGB values used, finish line an excellent addition, labels at the various dividing lines very helpful.