Monday, March 15, 2010

Visualizing Arguments

I called my local representative at one point in this yearlong health care reform process. Courtesy of one of those lefty blogs I'm always reading, I see that fivethirtyeight.com, a political polling blog used a word cloud to map the verbatim comments that voters provided to their representatives when telling them to vote either for or against the health care bill.

Those for...


and those against...


Not a bad summation of the viewpoints, I suppose, although mine in favor would have included the words "political suicide", referring to the result of not passing it.

2 comments:

Keith said...

Presenting either position in a format that includes the word cloud is highly appropriate. My choice there would be cluster

Steve said...

Yes, in true bipartisan fashion, you would have thought that word would show up prominently in both visuals.