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Bad graphs of the 2021 UK elections
Some rules can be bent. Others broken.
The United Kingdom held elections on Thursday 6th May. As volunteers count votes, we can look at some graphs in election literature and on social media.
One way to understand rules of graphical integrity is to see them bent and broken. This is a short article. It is not a complete list of all poor data visualisation during the election.
The elastic axis
One common fault with graphs in election leaflets are disproportionate bar charts.
Bar charts show their values through the length of the bars. When bar graphs do not start from zero, heights are disproportionate to the values.
In the Chippenham Pewsham ward in 2017, there were only two candidates.
For the Wiltshire Council election, the Conservative candidate got 696 votes. The Liberal Democrat candidate had 740. The Conservative bar should be 96% as high as the winner. It is not. That gives the constituent an impression of a greater gap between candidates.
