OJR: The Online Journalism Review

June 9, 2008

L.A. Times launches sharable electoral vote map

By Eric Ulken
2 comments | Archive Link

Which campaign will get to 270 in November, and how will they do it? The L.A. Times has built an interactive map that allows readers to create and test their own electoral vote scenarios, and then embed those scenarios in their own sites.

Sample electoral vote scenario: (not my prediction; just an uneducated guess for demonstration purposes only)

This is the creation of Sean Connelley, our Flash guru, based on our 2004 electoral vote tracker. The cool addition this time around is the sharing functionality.

We're hoping to improve on this as the campaign heats up, perhaps adding demographic info and data on past elections by state. Would love to hear suggestions.

More about: elections, infographics, social media, The Los Angeles Times, tools
Comments (2) • Email to a friend
Responses via Technorati • Google Blog Search
Share on del.icio.us • Digg

Comments:

From Robert Niles on June 10, 2008 at 9:49 AM

I'd love to see this hooked up with recent polling data as the default, rather than 2004 results (though that could be another option for readers to play with.)

Of course, that would make this crack even more addictive to political junkies like me than it is already. Thanks, guys; thanks a lot. This is going to kill waaay too many hours of my days between now and November. ;-)

From 208.54.15.13 on June 12, 2008 at 12:42 PM

We just updated the main map to show victory margins by state in the last four elections. We've talked about adding polling data, but the problem is that it's hard to judge which polls are sufficiently credible -- and because some states have very little polling activity, we don't want to risk leaving people with an inaccurate impression. Plus, we value your time, Robert Niles, and we wouldn't want to suck up too much of it. :-)

This article has been archived and is no longer accepting comments.