More Mapped Election Finances

The Federal Elections Commission has announced a map-presentation of campaign finance data for House and Senate races in 2008. This is a companion to the Presidential campaign finance map we noted in June.

A mouse-over on the House and Senate version shows the number of Representative Districts in the state. Clicking on the map brings up a state-view showing all the Districts boundaries. Mousing-over on that map highlights the District and shows the folks running for that seat.


From there, one can drill down to see detailed financial and donor data for each candidate.

As map-presented data goes, this is a fairly simple-looking site. But it leads users to a wealth of data. And that's probably the point.

LA Times Adds a Geospatial View to its Collection of Homicide Data

The Los Angeles Times this year has been using a blog to track all of the homicides in Los Angles County this year. The Homicide Report has a simple mission:

The report seeks to reverse an age-old paradox of big-city crime reporting, which dictates that only the most unusual and statistically marginal homicide cases receive press coverage, while those cases at the very eye of the storm -- those which best expose the true statistical dimensions of the problem of deadly violence -- remain hidden. (From an early "what is" post)

This week, an interactive map and database interface has been added, apparently coded by a professor at USC. It includes a filtering function, search, listings, and a geospatial display created using Google Maps.

It's not clear based on my brief poking around the site, what the back-end consists of, though it appears to be some form of simple server-side database query that exports XML or GeoRSS. The user interface allows "export" to GeoRSS or KML; the URLs that are returned are formated "getSavedQueryResults" commands.

The new web map interface strikes a nice balance between simple information presentation and a robust data query interface.

A Geospatial Presentation of Campaign Finance Information

The Federal Elections Commission has established a map-based interface with its campaign contributions data.

The 2008 Presidential Campaign Finance Map "summarizes financial information disclosed by each active 2008 Presidential candidate who has reported at least $10,000 in contributions from individuals other than the candidate," according to the FEC web site.

The site uses a simple "CONUS" view of the nation, with Alaska and Hawaii tucked-in where Mexico would be. Amounts of contributions are represented by circles of different relative sizes. Clicking on a state's circle will "zoom" to a state-level view with circles showing contribution amounts by 3-digit ZIP code levels. Clicking on those circles, if you have a candidate selected, brings you to the individual contribution records.

Users can view data for all candidates, candidates by party affiliation, or for individual candidates. the map-based presentation offers a simple, intuitive way to view one aspect of campaign contributions -- where geographically they come from.

The site currently shows about $157 million in contributions through the end of March. The next update will come in July.

Comparing the On-Line Map Giants

A frequent topic of conversation among State GIS Coordinators lately has been the relative merits of the big names in on-line mapping.

As in: "What aerial imagery does Google have for my state?"

It's not an idle question. For much of the public, the web-mapping that has come into vogue in the last year is a first entre into GIS and spatial data.

Now, there's Flash Earth, a very simple flash-based interface that allows one to zoom to an area and click between the versions of that area found on Google, Microsoft VE, Yahoo Maps, Ask.com, and others.

As a result, I can now say with some confidence that Google has the most up-to-date imagery for the resort area in coastal Delaware (where I live) of all of these sources. Your results may vary.

Flash Earth describes itself as "an experimental application" and notes that the imagery is used "without official consent" from Google et al. Via LIFEHACKER