Crowded prisons; triangle election revelations; and the power of the measles vaccine

The Guardian

23-05-2025

Hello and welcome to another edition of The Crunch!
The election may be over but the datavis can't stop, won't stop. In this week's newsletter we've got another election analysis triangle, a lot of measles coverage, and some heroic bar charts.
While Australians were focused on the election, our UK colleagues released a fantastic visual investigation into the more than 30 Victorian-era prisons still in use across the UK.
There's so many different visuals in this piece, from interactive panoramas to old and new illustrations, archive video, charts and photography. Even the colour choices convey the feel of 'damp, crowded, poorly ventilated'.
1. Breaking: vaccines work
The measles outbreak in the US has been unpacked in a lot of ways – we've linked to a bunch below. But this chart from Our World in Data stands out.
It's tricky to convey a change over time, across so many groups. If you aren't going to use a line chart, dealing with that many dimensions often results in something unwieldy or incomprehensible. But this chart is striking and the story very clear.
There's a few other visualisations in the piece and a lot to learn, including that 'researchers estimate that 94 million lives have been saved from measles vaccines'.
2. A triangle offence
We expressed our love of election triangles during the campaign. This post-election analysis of what's happening to the major party vote in Australia only drives it home.
The best thing about the triangle in this instance is how it allows for the comparison of singular seats at discrete points in time, a seat across time, and a bunch of different seats, all within the same framework.
3. Stacks on stacks
We've often used this newsletter to champion the humble bar chart, and this is a great example. This story from the Age unpacks how the government is doing compared to its housing target. There's a lot to draw out but the story is pretty well summed up with this one visual.
We also covered this issue during the election campaign, also with a bar chart.
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4. Porque no los dos
This bar chart looking at Coalition election results by the election analyst Ben Raue shows how versatile the format is. While the Age's bar chart is a snapshot, this is a comparison between the two parties, across time.
It's quite striking how the Nationals almost always get 15 or 16 seats election after election.
The Economist on how much worse America's measles outbreak could get ($)
Reuters on the rapid spread of measles
Our World in Data on the effectiveness of measles vaccines
The New York Times measles outbreak map and tracker ($)
The New York Times on how measles attacks an unvaccinated child ($)
We talked about the challenge of comparisons across a bunch of groups before. This small multiples pie chart from the American datavis legend Robert Simmon shows another way to tackle it.
The data is looking at faecal contamination at beaches in and around Sydney, and at least in aggregate probably is a much better comparison than if they were something like bar charts.
The discourse around pie charts can be … heated. This isn't to make a statement about the acceptability of pie charts – although this is a great read.
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