Data Vis Dispatch, September 17

We talk a lot about elections in the Data Vis Dispatch, but today we’ll start with a deeper underlying theme that is often expressed in election results: the division in political conversations and the belief that political parties do not support the people of their country:

And now for the highly anticipated visualizations of the U.S. debate. These range from highlighting the most discussed issues and the percentage of attacks directed at Harris or Trump to analyzing the candidates’ vocal tones. Additionally, The Washington Post broke new ground by collecting real-time reactions from a group of undecided voters in swing states:

So where does the debate leave us? Immigration remains a hot election topic, and we are keeping an even closer eye on the swing states:

It’s been a while since we took the time to dedicate an entire cluster to the war between Russia and Ukraine, but it’s also been a while since we’ve seen the front lines shift as quickly as they have in recent weeks. This week saw the release of several new battleground maps:

Other maps related to Russia and Ukraine cover Hetman Petro Sahaidachny’s 1618 campaign against Moscow, which draws parallels to the current war, as well as the sale of stolen Ukrainian grain by Russia on the global black market:

We’re not finished with maps yet. In the environment section, they reveal the story of unrecognized indigenous territories battling deforestation, the rising threat of floods in Eastern Europe, and the power outages caused by Hurricane Francine:

Sometimes the gravity of an issue and the vast number of those impacted are best conveyed through gaphics that illustrate the scale of those affected. Here are two examples: violence against women and the widespread suffering from tropical diseases:

In the financial visualizations we see up and down trends. What is going up? Stock performances after the Fed rate cut, the amount of charitable giving out of income tax in Hungary, and the pension insurance premium rate in South Korea:

It’s time for some playfulness with a playful topic: sports! Visualizations let you track the journey of the greatest mountain runner in the Alps and explore 59,507 U.S. basketball courts:

And we also end this Dispatch with a collection of playful visualizations that deal with work enemies (which apparently most of us have), whale watching, and Málaga, where animals have caught up with children: