Visualizing Continuity and Change in Political Behavior 1956-2014
The Swedish National Election Studies program (SNES) aims to develop new tools for visualization of the unique collection of historic data on elections, voter behavior and the function of representative democracy (1956-2014). For the first time, we will be able to communicate our empirical results about central dynamic democratic processes to a new and larger audience outside the academia. The communication project will enhance our understanding of the stability and change in political behavior over the past half-century and will also serve as a tool for visualizing data from future elections in Sweden. More specifically, the project will develop interactive applications and visualizations for key indicators of the well-being of a democratic society, the voter volatility between elections and during campaigns, the ideological distances between parties along issue dimensions, and the issue congruence between voters and political elites. Visualizations are developed in close cooperation with a private enterprise. Text, applications and visualizations will be published in 2017 as soon as they are ready, at the SNES homepage, at the homepage of the journal Forskning och Framsteg, at research blogs and in social media channels.
Final report
The project "Visualizations of Stability and Change in Political Behavior" aimed to develop new ways of communicating research findings from the Election Research Program's databases. In collaboration with Lapidus Interactive, the project developed new ways to visualize the accuracy of opinion polls, the general trend of parties' public opinion (poll of polls), voter flows (Sankey diagrams), interactive applications showing potential government bases and parties' positions along important issue dimensions, as well as parties' voter support in different voter groups.
Most of these interactive tools can still be accessed at www.datastory.org. The development of the tools have also greatly inspired visualizations of results on the Election Research Program's new website (www.gu.se/valforskning) and in our publications (fact sheets and reports), in articles in the magazine "Forskning och Framsteg", in public presentations and broadcasts as well as in the election coverage from Swedish Television during the election nights in 2018, 2019, and 2022. Our poll of polls that we developed with Lapidus Interactive in the Visualization project is currently published as "TV4 Opinion" in collaboration with the broadcasting company TV4.
Thus, the research communication project has served as an important catalyst for continued and intensified communication of research results on elections, public opinion, and democracy from the Swedish National Election Studies Program at the University of Gothenburg. Together with the implementation of a new graphic profile for tables, figures, and diagrams, the project has greatly contributed to establishing a new unified standard for visualizing results, which is visible in the Election Research Program's publications. In turn, the new ways of visualizing the results from our databases have provided insights into the stability and change of political behavior in Sweden that feedback into the program's research activities.
Most of these interactive tools can still be accessed at www.datastory.org. The development of the tools have also greatly inspired visualizations of results on the Election Research Program's new website (www.gu.se/valforskning) and in our publications (fact sheets and reports), in articles in the magazine "Forskning och Framsteg", in public presentations and broadcasts as well as in the election coverage from Swedish Television during the election nights in 2018, 2019, and 2022. Our poll of polls that we developed with Lapidus Interactive in the Visualization project is currently published as "TV4 Opinion" in collaboration with the broadcasting company TV4.
Thus, the research communication project has served as an important catalyst for continued and intensified communication of research results on elections, public opinion, and democracy from the Swedish National Election Studies Program at the University of Gothenburg. Together with the implementation of a new graphic profile for tables, figures, and diagrams, the project has greatly contributed to establishing a new unified standard for visualizing results, which is visible in the Election Research Program's publications. In turn, the new ways of visualizing the results from our databases have provided insights into the stability and change of political behavior in Sweden that feedback into the program's research activities.