Chris Cillizza of CNN thinks it is awesome
that Donald Trump won the dirt vote.
This. Is. Awesome.https://t.co/N6FbXVgI37 pic.twitter.com/8dOlnFfbmg
— Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) May 13, 2017
Someone needs to tell Cillizza, and the demented graphic designer who put all the effort into making a constellation of 50 irrelevant pie charts, that dirt doesn’t vote. Also that pie charts suck.
I would like to see Cillizza try and articulate why he thought that noise was awesome
, though.
This would be going over an election that happened eight bloody months ago? Isn’t it more usual eight months on to talk about what the people who were elected have actually done in that time?
Chris Cillizza, you are charged with the flagrant and reckless abuse of data visualisations. How do you plead?
I mean, seriously, that’s a fucking horrible visualisation. I’m guessing that the size of each pie chart represents the total number of electoral votes for each state… Or is it the total land area? Also, as a non-USAian, I have to admit that my knowledge of your geography is nowhere near good enough for me to have any idea which state is which, with a handful of exceptions (but then I bet most of you couldn’t identify North Lanarkshire on an unlabelled map of Scotland). However, even to me, it looks like Alaska is missing. Any maybe Hawaii?
I think that the original article was snark. It was not meant to be taken seriously.
WTF? Is this supposed to be some kind of satiric attack on the Electoral College being an antiquated method to represent the importance of agriculture in the well being of the country? Be nice if there was a parenthetic line about how Electoral College districts represents acreage more than people. I’m baffled. *ptui*
?
The original article, if you click through, is an attempt to criticize people who think that bragging about land area won is anything but dumb. It’s specifically showing how it’s a stupid thing to be bragging about.
That Cillizza would think that graph is awesome – when it’s picked out of the middle of an argument about why that graph is stupid – says pretty much all you need to know about Chris Cillizza.
1) I agree that that the original article was snark
2) The original article points out that even in the elections that Obama won, the amount of land area “won” was greater for the Republican candidates.
3) I have seen it suggested that Trumpists could be trolled by pointing out that since the oceans are colored blue, they obviously voted for Hillary.
This Pie Chart Is Delicious And Statistically Sound
It does make one real point, however, which is the urban/rural divide. The Republicans have a firm grip on rural voters — even where I live, in Connecticut, my small town is reliably Republican and went for Trump. This is an issue worth thinking about.
It’s failed as snark if the people it’s snarking are now waving it around proudly. From a land where “bigger is better” the premise, that one republican sitting on five square miles of nothing is better than one democrat sitting on 5 square inches of LA, seems to have currency.
The phrase “dumber than dirt” seems particularly appropriate here.
geez, is that ever stupid. Impressive stupid with stupid stains al over it.
The rural-urban divide could be better illustrated simply by looking at a map of which counties voted for which candidate.
Dunc @ # 2: I’m guessing that the size of each pie chart represents the total number of electoral votes for each state… Or is it the total land area?
Definitely land area, or the southeast-most corner [Florida] would come out about 8 times larger than that of the northwest-most corner [Alaska] (it would be closer to 25 times larger if scaled by population, if you want an example of how the Electoral College problem distorts US politics).
Here you go Dunc, a labeled map from the article linked to in the tweet.
Pierce R. Butler @14: I’d assumed that the Alaska pie was California, because it’s more than 50% blue. I see (thanks to Nes @14) that I was wrong. I also didn’t realise that Alaska was that much bigger than the other states, nor could I remember how many EC votes Florida has.
All of which only serves to re-enforce my original assertion that this is a truly dreadful visualisation…
The twitter seems very anti-trump and…sometimes maybe satiric/sarcastic/whatever humor
Not too different from PZ? ;)
America has been about dirt ever since it stood as a proxy for “plantation owner”. I mean, if it isn’t supposed to vote, why is there an electoral college? It destroys votes by population, and I’ve heard people stand up for it still, on the grounds that it ensures the rural minority gets its say. If that means every other type of minority doesn’t, well, apparently enough people with dirt think that’s a small price to pay.
Look at the man’s Twitter feed. It seems pretty clear to me that he was saying the snarkticle was awesome, not the chart.
Well yes, it’s not the best way to illustrate the urban/rural divide, but that is the explanation for the pattern.
Zero chance any Drumpfheteers will recognize the snark/sarcasm/irony here, especially those dumber than dirt. HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR.
In other news Jim Bakker says ‘Mocking Trump is the spirit of the anti-christ’.
monad @ #17 — And given that the dirt minority controls the legislatures of many states and currently the US Congress, there’s no chance they will legislate themselves out of power. In fact, what many arch conservatives have been angling for is a constitutional convention to do all sorts of evil. With a couple of more states, they could get their wish.
The article Cillizza points to says that the map is stupid.
He seems to have uncovered a lot of people who leap before they look (including PZ). That’s a pretty big gotcha.
The notion of Cillizza gotcha-ing anyone here is risible, particularly if you’ve ever read him. It was a clear endorsement of an image he didn’t bother to try to parse apart from it Looking Cool, hence being unable to explain why it was awesome, beyond that critics failed to be “open-minded.”
Your reasoning seems to curve back on itself — circular, as it were. It’s pure hater logic. The comment threads on various forums read like something from Stormfront.
PZ, your recent trolls are pitiful.
@bobmunck:
What the hell is qrong with you? it’s Twitter. Unless you’re told “Go to this link for more context” you’re supposed to assume the tweet has all the context needed. That’s the whole fucking point of Twitter.
What is this word salad
Also, please spare us talk of “haters.” It’s such a grating, whinging construction.