11–20 of 50 posts
It would be helpful to see an animation to clarify this, but it's interesting to quantify how increasingly polarized this has become, starting in the early '90s.
I think it's fascinating watching how the parties have split up more over the years.
I do not recommend you clicking on any of the dots.
Can someone make a glass app that covers a politicians face with the logos of their largest interests? That would make politics bearable for me.
I'd love to see a comprehensive database of donor-politician relationships along with causes they've championed and bills introduced/voted on. In lieu of the "approval graphs" shown by TV stations during debates, it would be more productive to show their existing voting patterns and who has supported them.
There's probably some cool insights in here, but I'll need some help understanding it. For instance, what does an edge in the graph represent? What can I tell from the boldness of the line? @DavidChoinard can you give us a key?
The two tightly coiled clusters shows just how weak the relationships are between the two parties.
The closer the nodes are to the center, the more bipartisan those Senators are. In the current Congress, Sens. Murkowski and Collins really stand out as by far the most bipartisan senators and important linchpins in bridging the gap between both parties. (this bar graph of partisanship shows that: http://i.imgur.com/gYCMaxo.png)
Also, it’s clear that in the current Senate, partisanship is a lot more pronounced among Democrats, likely because they hold the majority in the Senate. (ie. they have a lot less incentive to compromise)
While there were ups and downs, it’s clear that there’s a general trend of the Senate becoming a lot more divided over the last 25 years. Comparing 1989 to today is striking — opinions were a lot more intertwined back then (this static image really emphasize it: http://i.imgur.com/4kDokyz.jpg).
For those interested, I believe the underlying data is from DW-NOMINATE ( http://voteview.com/dwnomin.htm ).
