Party like it's 1999

Have you heard of the Tea Party? Interested to know how many people in your area are members?

The Tableau Public blog focused recently on a map of Tea Party membership created by IREHR. Find the original post here.

Naturally when I see a map like this the first thing I do is zoom into my area. However, the IREHR visualization makes it difficult to do so quickly. The city and state data are already available, so I put it to use.

Notes:

1. The map is slow to load and update. I suspect this is due to number of points the map is drawing.
2. The IREHR viz did not include Alaska, Hawaii and Guam, while it did included lots of members that did not have a location listed. I have filtered out the unknown locations and grouped the rest of the data more logically.

I made the following changes/improvements in my visualization:

• Added filtering by Region, State or City to allow you to quickly zoom into an area of interest
• Removed the size legend and replaced it with a caption on the map
• Add a link to the data source instead of just listing it
• Changed the membership numbers you see when you hover over a point to a whole number
• Changed the Faction filter to a slider instead of a single select option (saves space)
• Washed out the Faction color legend so that it's easier to see overlapping points

Which visualization is easier for you to use? I think it is easier and quicker to find what you need in my viz, but then again, I'm biased.