Cartogram or election map? The Guardian vs The New York Times

A cartogram represents geography diagrammatically. Note above for example that London takes up more space than parts of Wales because it has much denser population

The New York Times didn’t use a cartogram for its EU referendum map, Gregor Aisch explained last week, because they are “too confusing for readers unfamiliar with the geography”.

Since this has come up a few times on Twitter, here’s my longer answer on why we didn’t use a cartogram #brexit map https://t.co/5825i8sgkV

— gregor aisch (@driven_by_data) June 24, 2016

The Guardian, on the other hand, did use a cartogram. In a series of tweets their visuals editor Xaquin Gonzalez explained why

Since this has come up a few times on Twitter, here’s my longer answer on why we didn’t use a cartogram #brexit map https://t.co/5825i8sgkV

— gregor aisch (@driven_by_data) June 24, 2016

1/ .@driven_by_data is mostly right https://t.co/lo3p7gdSwM but he neglects a few of things. So some peeps asked why we DID …

— Xaquín G.V. (@xocasgv) June 28, 2016

2/ Indeed cartograms don’t really work unless users are familiar with the geography. That’s key—ours were. pic.twitter.com/Qd4MB4pkgJ

— Xaquín G.V. (@xocasgv) June 28, 2016

3/ That’s true for any map actually, a detailed choropleth means nothing to people unfamiliar with the territory …

— Xaquín G.V. (@xocasgv) June 28, 2016

4/ … and the more familiar, large populations are often tiny specks of colour. So you add areas in detail to compensate.

— Xaquín G.V. (@xocasgv) June 28, 2016

5/ Regions’ shapes and boundaries between local areas were kept. So for our audience it was rather easy to pinpoint places.

— Xaquín G.V. (@xocasgv) June 28, 2016

6/ Anecdotal evidence: “(One news editor to another while watching the results) Click on Birmingham right there” pic.twitter.com/XoRfkmEh59

— Xaquín G.V. (@xocasgv) June 28, 2016

7/ We should have probably had more classes—to give a more nuanced picture of the difference strength in support …

— Xaquín G.V. (@xocasgv) June 28, 2016

8/ … but for nuance we had zoomed-in geographic analysis further down. Our cartogram had other friends on the page. pic.twitter.com/F7AvKI2YAp

— Xaquín G.V. (@xocasgv) June 28, 2016

9/ We opted-out of the cartogram for print: thought the one below would make annotations easier for our audience. pic.twitter.com/Ok4US7Ms2N

— Xaquín G.V. (@xocasgv) June 28, 2016

10/ And finally, more anecdotal evidence OH while at lunch break: “I loved the Guardian map with that big yellow London” 🙂

— Xaquín G.V. (@xocasgv) June 28, 2016