On the division of ideology…

I have for some time been trying to figure out a way of discussing the current election in a design context. On a previous post there was a discussion about the portrayal in the media of the great divide between “liberals” and “conservatives.” So I started out writing this post wondering are we as a Nation really that polarized? Is it just Red vs. Blue with no in-between? or is there something else. And more specifically how do we view/represent this polarization?

The above map created by Robert J. Vanderbei, of Princeton, portrays the presidential elections based on county rather than state. It shows the shift in political ideology from 1968 to now. For example in 1968 it clearly shows the effect George Wallace, of the American Independent party, running on pro-segregation platform. 1992 shows the effect of Ross Perot, who was favored in several counties, but did not win any states or electoral votes. Interestingly enough, there is no indication of Ralph Nader being favored in any county during the 2000 election.

Mapping is great tool for understanding things. The above two maps are both of the 2004 election. The first a version just show election results by county. The second showing those same results mapped onto “mountains” of population density. There is a clear image that rural America is Red while many other areas of the country are closer to purple with some peaks blue (even more interesting is this version where only red and blue channels are shown). Bill Bishop’s book The Big Sort addresses the shift of like minded ideologies into clusters: college-educated individuals moving to key cities, the rise of evangelical churches in rural communities, etc. He argues that the “Big Sort” has pushed us away from moderate ideologies by noting that there are fewer moderates in political office today. Some of this is clearly evident just by looking at the map above. But his premise isn’t primarily about political ideology but more about divides in just everyday beliefs, young and old, etc. It just so happens that politics are part of it. Again some of it is evident in just looking at the map.

But that doesn’t tell us the whole story. University of Texas professor Daron Shaw notes that Americans are not as polarized as we think. In an article feature on the University’s website Shaw notes:

“When we’ve examined American’s opinions on a range of issues, we find they are actually very centrist… for example, if we ask people, ‘Is the war in Iraq good or bad?’ there is polarization along predictable lines. But, if we ask a question like, ‘Should we pull the troops out tomorrow, or bomb Baghdad?’ very few people will choose either of these extreme options. Instead, they’ll most often choose a middle ground solution, such as a slow withdrawal.”

So according to Shaw, when it comes to party we lean left or right or sometimes other, but in the arena of public policy we lie in the middle. But perhaps what it comes down to more than anything and perhaps the big question of this post, with an extremely long and somewhat round about introduction, is what is the designer’s role in all of this?

Why is it we rarely see our political system illustrated like above? Why is it a computer science faculty member is creating this information and not designers? The below map comes from the NYTimes website today.

Time Magazine, Newsweek, and many of the other major news outlets have the same thing (Fox News’ was broken and didn’t show data). So why not show pollster data on a county basis? Does the media (through design) perpetuate this division? or are we further becoming a divided nation as Bishop suggests? And what is our role in all of this as designers?

Perhaps as designers we should be more aware of how we represent things. We should question if traditional models of representation are enough; we should be more conscience about how data is represented and how that shapes opinion.