Visualization of U.S presidents' approval ratings (opens in new tab)

(clusterize.com)

59 pointswisp14y ago35 comments

35 comments

23 comments · 10 top-level

rcthompson14y ago· 5 in thread

I think there are one too many dimensions to this data. I know they collect statistics on both approval and disapproval, but for the most part approval + disapproval = constant, so I think it would be more informative to simply plot something like (approval - disapproval) on the y-axis and time on the x-axis. Then you could see the trends and compare different presidents without having to watch the animation once for each president and then trying to remember where that president went while you're watching the next one so you can compare them.

xianshou14y ago

Actually, for several of the presidents, approval + disapproval != constant. For example, Obama moves straight right (up on disapproval) for his first 200 days before descending in approval. There seems to be a substantial difference between the effects of actions that anger some (presumably of the opposing party) and those that disappoint all.

mbostock14y ago

There's a good analysis of how to design a visualization that shows both approval and disapproval here:

http://eagereyes.org/blog/2012/embracing-uncertainty-two-lin...

CWuestefeld14y ago

There's a problem, but not with the approval/disapproval axes. It's with the time axis.

Note that we're looking at days 0 - 1,000, that is, less than a 3-year range. This completely overlooks the second term of 2-term presidents. So, for example, we're seeing GWB's post-9/11 boom but not his later ignominy, and we're not seeing Reagan after he got the economy sorted.

colonel_panic14y ago

But let's face it, the reason we're having our attention drawn to this right now is that we've got a president running for reelection, so it gives us exactly what we want to know.

redthrowaway14y ago

If you did that, though, you'd have to plot each president as a line. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's a different visualization entirely.

This reminds me in many ways of Hans Rosling's TED talk on visualizing global health outcomes and other data:

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_y...

joejohnson14y ago· 4 in thread

The interface is pretty nice. Why are you plotting approval vs disapproval? These aren't independent quantities... I'm sure there is a better way to relate these two.

JohnnyBrown14y ago

Perhaps this would work:

x-axis is time, y is approval/disapproval, width of line represents percent neutral. But then where's the excuse to play with the neat video library?

projectileboy14y ago

Approval + disapproval is almost always less than 100 in most polls.

joejohnson14y ago

Right, thus the dependence between the two quantities.

2 more replies

nkassis14y ago

Maybe approval visit year of election(or when the poll was taken) I think that would show a downward tendency.

projectileboy14y ago· 3 in thread

Depressing... Watching the consistent motions, I think this says more about the people than it says about their presidents.

rorrr14y ago

Or maybe that certain presidents make certain promises and then consistently break them. Obama has been very disappointing, I had high hopes for him.

pacomerh14y ago

You had high hopes, but with the last president not even hopes. It's totally different, what's worse? Cool graph though.

Terretta14y ago

Read this:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/01/15/andrew-sull...

1 more reply

joshuahhh14y ago· 1 in thread

This appears to be totally broken in Firefox (9.0.1, on Linux)... don't know what's up with that.

rcthompson14y ago

Works prefectly fine for me on FF 9.0.1 on Ubuntu.

thomasgerbe14y ago

Funny how time can sometimes heals all wounds. Contrast Truman's approval ranking on the graph from the OP's post with his aggregate ranking in this table from Wikipedia, where he is ranked in the first quartile.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Presiden...

uiri14y ago

It would be helpful if impossible points were the background colour (for example, 60/50 or 50/60, 40/70 or 70/40, etc) so that the big mass of whitespace is less distracting and it is more evident when neutral people shifted to one opinion or if people flip-flopped.

pippy14y ago

The problem with this visualization is that you've got X/Y being disapproval / approval. The only case when they're not correlated is during the first few days of entering office.

There might be a less confusing way to display the data.

epaga14y ago

Fascinating (and strangely inspiring) that after ~550 days in office, every single president on the chart had the explicit disapproval of at least(!) 16% of the country.

waterlesscloud14y ago

Thanks for this. The animation is interesting. Ping pong Truman, for example. Learned some things too, like that LBJ finished up worse off the Nixon did.

maeon314y ago

I'd like to see the same thing with congress's approval ratings broken down by member of congress.

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