In hrbrmstr/voteogram: United States House and Senate Voting Cartogram Generators

knitr::opts_chunk$set(
  collapse = TRUE,
  comment = "#>"
)

Basic usage only requires this package and ggplot2:

library(voteogram)
library(ggplot2)

Getting Vote Data

The cartograms need data and the best way to do that is by obtaining roll call vote data from ProPublica via the roll_call() function. Data can be retrieved for any House or Senate vote by specificing the target vote parameters:

sen <- roll_call("senate", 115, 1, 110)
rep <- roll_call("house", 115, 1, 256)

sen <- readRDS(system.file("extdata", "sen.rds", package="voteogram"))
rep <- readRDS(system.file("extdata", "rep.rds", package="voteogram"))

Their structures look the same and there is a print-method to make the console output easier on the eyes:

str(sen)

sen$votes

str(rep)

fortify(rep)

That data may be useful on its own (ouside of plotting).

Note, also, that ggplot2's fortify() method uses the provided object class method for roll call objects to know how to extract the rectangular data necessary for plotting.

Making Cartograms

These cartograms have a few style options:

ProPublica

senate_carto(sen) +
  labs(title="Senate Vote 110 - Invokes Cloture on Neil Gorsuch Nomination") +
  theme_voteogram()

house_carto(rep, pp_square=TRUE) +
  labs(x=NULL, y=NULL, 
       title="House Vote 256 - Passes American Health Care Act,\nRepealing Obamacare") +
  theme_voteogram()

house_carto(rep, pp_square=FALSE) +
  labs(x=NULL, y=NULL, 
       title="House Vote 256 - Passes American Health Care Act,\nRepealing Obamacare") +
  theme_voteogram()

GovTrack

house_carto(rep, "gt") +
  labs(x=NULL, y=NULL, 
       title="House Vote 256 - Passes American Health Care Act,\nRepealing Obamacare") +
  theme_voteogram()

They can be shrunk down well (though that likely means annotating them in some other way):

Tiny Cartograms

senate_carto(sen) + theme_voteogram(legend=FALSE)

house_carto(rep) + theme_voteogram(legend=FALSE)

house_carto(rep, pp_square=TRUE) + theme_voteogram(legend=FALSE)

hrbrmstr/voteogram documentation built on March 12, 2023, 8:06 a.m.