July 2012 Summaries

The Political Moneyball` is a visualization project by The Wall Street Journal that uses data from the Federal Election Commission to show connections between political action committees, campaigns, and individuals in the 2012 election. The graphic, built with CartoDB, displays over one million connections between donors and committees, updated monthly. It provides insights into how similar donor groups cluster together and offers a tutorial on how to use and navigate the graphic. The project is an example of effective data visualization in politics, showcasing the power of interactive tools like CartoDB to explore large datasets in real-time.

The International Open Government Data Conference is a co-sponsored event by the World Bank, U.S. General Services Administration, and others, focusing on using data to work effectively, with key themes including best practices from around the world, open government, collaboration, transparency, and interactive public participation. The conference features a virtual component and will have an in-person booth where attendees can learn about CartoDB, explore data mashup datasets, discover new relationships, publish, and share their work, as well as meet experts, policy makers, developers, and others working in open government. O'Reilly Media's Correspondent Alex Howard will liveblog the conference. The event aims to promote a dynamic discussion around the historic opportunity presented by open government data.

The Wall Street Journal published its first interactive map on the 2012 election, utilizing CartoDB for data analysis and storage, which is built through CartoDB API's and the Leaflet map library. The final map summarizes the state of both the presidential and Senate race, with additional features such as projected electoral votes, economic indicators, and special filters that highlight editor's picks and senior vote trends. Readers can filter data by State and County to analyze candidate strengths and weaknesses, and a bar shows the estimated lead in each state, while also providing information on leaning and swinging states.