President Obama began his second term today with a roughly 2,000 word inaugural speech at the Capitol. How does the length of his remarks compare with other presidents in history?
Data source: Wikipedia
Recent posts
Charting Views On The ‘Fiscal Cliff’
The Washington Post charts the results of its new poll:
In addressing the fiscal cliff, the public supports increasing taxes on the wealthy but have mixed views of changing federal income tax deductions and are opposed to changing Medicare.
The Washington Post
Mapping Obama’s Election Performance By County In 2012 Vs. 2008
The Washington Post over the weekend published an interesting story about President Obama’s southern support in the election:
The nation’s first black president finished more strongly in the region than any other Democratic nominee in three decades, underscoring a fresh challenge for Republicans who rely on Southern whites as their base of national support.
This map compares Obama’s performance in 2008 to this year’s election in the lower 48 states. Darker blue shades represent higher percentage point increases, and darker red shades represent decreases in percentage points. It’s clear he performed better this time in parts of the Deep South:
The Daily Viz
But why? One likely explanation for Obama’s stronger showing in the parts of the South could be that those counties have a high proportion of black voters, and Obama turned them out. According to the Post, “black voters came out in droves on Election Day and voted overwhelmingly for Obama — near or above 95 percent in most parts of the South.” Here’s a map of the black population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. See a correlation?
U.S. Census Bureau
Notice too that Obama did worse in Coal Country than he did four years ago, perhaps because the region has higher unemployment rates than the national average, or because the Romney campaign wooed voters in this region, especially in Virginia. Here’s a map of coal production, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. This is less clear, in part because the map shows all coal-producing counties, not just those in which it’s a key part of the economy now (the red and pink areas in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia):
USGS
And, finally, it’s no surprise that Romney did better than McCain in 2008 in Utah. Romney, of course, is a Mormon and he led the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. But if you want to compare it with the election results, here’s a map of the Mormon population, again from the U.S. Census Bureau:
U.S. Census Bureau
I’m generally not a huge fan of county-by-county election maps because counties as a unit of geography are largely meaningless in national elections. But in this case maybe it’s useful. Meanwhile, check out the Post’s nice map gallery of the 2012 electorate.
Charting Presidential Voting Motives
These two charts from the latest Washington Post poll are interesting. They show what’s motivating likely voters in the presidential race. President Obama’s supporters are largely voting for him. Mitt Romney’s supporters, however, are voting to oust Obama:
Analyzing Convention Speeches
The New York Times created two nifty interactive bubble charts to represent the frequency of words used at the respective political conventions.
First, the Republicans:
And the Democrats (so far):
We’ll see what this looks like after Thursday night.
Obama Approval Rating Charts Updated
A few months ago I posted a dashboard of 21 interactive charts comparing President Obama’s approval rating among different groups (men vs. women, Democrats vs. Republicans, rich vs. poor, etc.). I’ve updated the charts with the most recent Gallup data:
Mapping VP Birthplaces
Charting U.S. Gun Manufacturing
More than 5 million guns were made in the United States in 2010, according to the latest data available from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, among the highest in recent history. See the trend in this quick column chart:
Download the data
Mapping Internet Access In U.S. Homes
About three quarters of Americans have access to the Internet at home, according to a new survey released this week by the U.S. Census Bureau.
New Hampshire, Washington and Utah top the list, with more than 82 percent of their residents having Internet access. New Mexico, Mississippi and Arkansas are at the bottom, with about 64 percent of residents able to get online at home. Here’s a state-by-state map:
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, October 2010.
The Health Care Ruling as a ‘Word Tree’
As everyone knows by now, the U.S. Supreme Court today essentially upheld the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. I created a word tree to find specific words in the document and see how they fit in context with those around them. Here are phrases that begin with “federal power”:
Here are phrases that end with “federal power”:
Phrases that begin with “cost”:
And, finally, “tax”:
The tool allows you to select words and change the view by drilling down:
Check out the interactive version, and try out your own phrases.