2008 Presidential Candidate Donations: McCain vs. Obama
Wesley Grubbs (American, born 1976)
and Nicolas Yahnke (American, born 1988)
of Pitch Interactive (USA, est. 2007)
2008
Processing software
Pitch Interactive’s data visualizations illuminate complex sets of information in a way that is dynamic, accessible, and visually eloquent. During the 2008 presidential election, Pitch Interactive illustrated the totality of private contributions to the Obama and McCain campaigns from January 2007 to August 2008 to demonstrate what kinds of donations drove each candidate’s efforts. In the resulting circular graphic, the arches in the middle depict total amounts, the black smudges on the edges are individual donor names, and the brackets that zoom out from center to edge represent four levels of giving: $1 - $100 in the topmost bracket, followed by $101 - $500, $501 - $,1000, and > $1,000 at the bottom. As such, the visualization emphasizes that the most exceptional aspect of the Obama campaign was not its total amount of contributions, but rather the overwhelming extent of support in the form of small contributions.
Category: Worlds
Tags: Communications / Visualizations / Networks / Maps
