Help on political campaign by someone who knows Excel features well

[Aniej]

I could really use some help from someone who could advise me on creating a certain kind of graphical representation comparing different candidate's level of support in different regions of a city. This is for a Democrat, that might make it more appealing or perhaps less, though I do hope it is the former. The help I need shouldn't be very difficult as I know excel well, but it is this type of chart that I am somewhat unsure of so I could really use a bit of assistance ASAP.

 

[Aniej]

oh and feel free to PM me if that is easier than going through some of these steps on the thread.

 

[iSaint]

What kind of data do you have?

 

[Aniej]

I have an excel spread sheet of number of votes a candidate received broken down by ward. Then I have the ward map. I am trying to compare the number of votes one candidate got to another, but trying to show it graphically based on the ward map. Here are attached ward map. data I will have to email to you can you PM me.

 

[iSaint]

That's a lot of separate pieces of data to compile. My first thought was pie charts. But, again, you would be creating a large number of charts.

I'm not sure how to do this, but you could color in the ward map according to who won. Then have a graphic or blow-up of the ward when you hover your mouse over it that would also show number of votes received.

This I know how: You could group several wards (by importance/size/vote margin) and create a column chart with several wards per page. You can do a lot of formatting with Excel charts: colors, font, etc. You can then import charts into PowerPoint or Keynote, or print them out.

Here's what I am thinking:
Oops, I title the axises wrong!

 

[iSaint]

Here's one with the rightly named axises (is that a word?)

You can also format each bar of data to show actual numbers, or a percentage of the total. In other words, you can format to show as much or as little information as possible.

 

[CanadaRAM]

I have an excel spread sheet of number of votes a candidate received broken down by ward. Then I have the ward map. I am trying to compare the number of votes one candidate got to another, but trying to show it graphically based on the ward map. Here are attached ward map. data I will have to email to you can you PM me.

How, graphically, do you plan to illustrate this?

Putting a tiny bar chart on top of each ward would work, but only if the map were printed out the size of a wall.

The classic way to do it is to have a fill colour for each ward, and vary the colour based on the % vote split -- usable only for 2 party sytems, generally. And a real problem for colour-blind readers.

To get this done automatically I'm guessing would require specialist data-mapping software like ArcInfo (is that still available?) or a graphics program that can have parameters data-driven (CAD program or, there was one Mac illustration program long ago that could do this, ICR the name...) and drive the fill colour from the data. Of course, this means redrawing the map in the specific file format, or at least creating an overlay shape for each ward.

You could use Excel to caculate an RGB value for each ward, based on the % vote difference between party 1 and party 2
-100% would be pure red 255,00,00 an even split would be 127,00,127 and 100% would be 00,00,255 pure blue for example - (you would want to use % difference, not the absolute numbers of course).