Vote 2012 Map Center

Posted at 2:12 p.m., Feb. 21, 2012

Tags: 2012 election and pbs newshour

We've been using the Map Center for our live primary and caucus results online since Iowa voted at the beginning of the year. Here's New Hampshire (the next contest), including an example of a county breakdown.

We've been using the Map Center for our live primary and caucus results online since Iowa voted at the beginning of the year. Here's New Hampshire (the next contest), including an example of a county breakdown.
On air, it can appear either on a monitor on the set, controlled by the iPad on the desk...
...or the control room can display that image full-screen. In both cases, it's still the same Web application available on our website.
The Electoral College calculator includes general election results back to 1964 and allows users to make their own predictions about how 2012 will play out.
Demographic data available includes unemployment rates, households with Social Security income and a Census-derived ethnic diversity index.

One of the projects I've been working on since my first month at the PBS NewsHour is maps of demographic data and results for the 2012 presidential election, including all of the Republican nominating contests. The overall idea is to make the same information and graphics available to our viewers and users at home at the exact same time we're using them on air.

The Vote 2012 Map Center is built on the Dojo toolkit's graphics library, which lets the graphics work on any device that can render images using SVG, VML or the HTML5 canvas element. That means there's no Flash involved anywhere—which also means it works on Apple iOS devices. That's a nice goal anyway, given their market penetration, but it's a bigger deal for us because our on-air editors and correspondents can use an iPad to control the graphics they're using in real time. (Everyone's still getting used to that, but we're getting better.)

Right now, there are three basic kinds of functionality in the application (with more to come once some external funding issues get resolved): live results via the Associated Press, static maps of demographic data and an Electoral College calculator. It's a big project for us, and it's been a crazy ride so far.