Chicago Tribune Wins "Tool Tip" Award for Election Map

It's been fascinating to watch how varies publications offer their version of the U.S. presidential election map. At this point, it's almost a given that all of them will let you change the electoral count for each candidate. But the battleground now seems to be what ancillary data can populate the map or in the case of the Chicago Tribune, what the tool tip should show as you "mouse over" each state. The Tribune shows the historical margin of victory for the presidential candidate in past elections. They've made it easy by color-coding by the typical red vs. blue for each winning party. So, the result is a compelling tool that allows the user to determine how deep or shallow the margin of victory is and also provides some intelligence for looking at the current polls to determine if the party has a strong foundation.

Comments

Unknown said…
Dear Mr.Hawk --

Actually the flash app was created by Los Angeles Times :-)

For those who want to have a cool tooltip as well, you can find the source at Razorberry's blog, the Times used a slightly modified version.

http://tinyurl.com/56j3hb
BAbramms said…
ATTN: Joe Francica
Another low tech representation with a very high impact was created for ODTmaps.com by former Chicago Tribune cartographer, Paul Breding. His '08 Election map is posted at http://www10.GIScafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?articleid=601182 and you can see the image (and download it for free (personal use only) at http://odtmaps.com/detail.asp_Q_product_id_E_pres-map-2008

Popular posts from this blog

USAToday Looks at Bleak Jobs Growth Outlook for 2010

Chinese Investments in Raw Materials Mapped by Forbes.com

National Media Scrambles with Maps of Haiti