Spatial distribution of Parties in Brazil
I’ve been collecting Brazilian electoral data for my dissertation for some time, and have always wondered about how to display the somewhat massive data available in an efficient manner. Take the best case scenario: 27 districts (states) x 4 elections (since 1994) x 7 largest parties=756 data points. This is a lot of numbers to look at in a table! Imagine using aggregate data at the municipality level: 5000 x 4 x 7! No, you do the math…
Maps, of course, is one way to display the data. The major problem then is that the widely varying population density in Brazil would produce a misleading map of the voting distribution across the country. That is the reason I am considering using cartograms, as discussed in the last post (link). Displayed below is a whole set of cartograms displaying data for the Câmara dos Deputados for the past four elections. The idea now is that areas in the cartogram should be proportional to the number of seats assigned to each district (which in Brazil are the states.) Given the high degree of malapportionment, the cartogram looks somewhat different from the one based on population or vote totals we presented previously. The time dimension is presented as a movie, so it is easy to follow the spatial distribution of seats for each party throughout the recent elections.
Now I only have to figure out how to put this in paper format…