Wave hello to more chart junk!

The NY Times has a beautiful idea for a data presentation.  The link  is here, and I've pasted the graphic below.

Each little business suit (why not some dresses?!) represents a congressional district.  The y-axis shows the how 'Republican' the district is, by indicating the share of voters that chose the Republican candidate in the last two Presidential elections, relative to the entire country.  The color shows how the district voted, with blue indicating a Democrat victory.  The theory behind the graph is that the more 'Republican' the district has been in the past, the harder it would be to elect a Democratic house member.  The higher the number of blue suits, the more impressive a win.

The takeaway from the picture is that the Democrats did pretty well with districts that are just a bit more Republican than the rest of the country, but then their victories faded out.  This kind of analysis is really cool and creative.  It's intuitive to represent a difficult victory this way.

The concept is a bit complicated - look at how many words it took to explain it!  It  is especially worthwhile to stay simple when the concept is complex. 

Here's some suggestions:

• Get rid of the blue wave, as it's cute but adds nothing to our understanding.  
• A vertical bar chart would do a better job than the chauvinist blue suits.  
• Why did they order the suits in such a manner that some reds wind up to the left of blues, while others are on the right side.  Does that teach something, or is it just a distraction?
• The chart is from last week.  I wonder if it would have been hard for the NY Times to update it, as it is still prominently displayed on their web site and a lot of the races are yellow for 'undetermined.'

I have to admit that I like the hill, though.  It's cute. 

I'd love to help you understand how to use data visualization to communicate clearly, and to understand it well for business, and in particular, for the relevant section of the GMAT.  Please don't be a stranger!  Get in touch with me here.