Unemployment Chart Wars
Yesterday, on the one year anniversary of the stimulus, Organizing For America sent the graph below to supporters. It depicts monthly US job loss from December 2007 to January 2010, and the message it means to send is clear: the stimulus is working.
I’ve covered the political power of data visualization before (here), so there’s no need to rehash those ideas. Instead, I’d like to focus on how the GOP should (and did) respond.
Here’s their response:
I understand the point they’re trying to make, but it doesn’t match the simple power of the original. Here’s the chart they should have used:
Simple, clear, and it tells a story. (And in case you were wondering, yes, the vertical axis begins at 2.5% - I did this because there will never ever be zero unemployment, and 2.5% is the lowest it’s been for the last 62 years).
And here’s another chart they could have used, this one courtesy of Pollster.com’s Charles Franklin:
Finally, if they wanted to get slightly more complicated in their analysis, they could have done this, showing how the change in unemployment during Obama's first year compares to other first year presidents:
UPDATE: Matthias Shapiro, who blogs at PoliticalMathBlog.com points out to me on Twitter his reworked version of the graph, which is outstanding:
- Alex Lundry
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