Consumer confidence in current economic conditions

For NYT Opinion, Nate Silver compares consumer confidence between two surveys. The University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment focuses more on personal spending, whereas the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Survey. Usually, the estimates follow each other, but there’s been a split the past few years, as shown in the difference chart above.

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Gas prices and confidence

Everywhere you go, gas prices show up on big boards, like a proxy measurement for the times.

When gas prices are really low, something exciting is happening, and in my case when I was a teen, your mom tells you to drive across town to line up for the gas that dropped under a dollar. When gas prices are high, like they are these days, something must be up.

Emily Badger and Eve Washington, for The New York Times, show how that feeling is tied to consumer confidence:

Philip Bump, for The Washington Post, used connected scatterplots to show how gas prices are tied to approval ratings:

Connected scatterplots are kind of a tricky read at first, but approval and prices appear to go up and down at the same time. Look at it like a regular scatterplot at first, and then follow the line for time.

I wonder what this looks like if you go farther back. I’m guessing similar. What else is tied to gas prices? Will electricity prices eventually replace the familiar gas prices? Is it reasonable to tie our hopes and dreams to the price of a gallon? Is sentiment flipped for people who primarily ride bikes to get places? I have so many questions.

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Calculating the new cost of your summer road trip

With gas prices a lot higher than usual, Júlia Ledur, Leslie Shapiro, and N. Kirkpatrick, for The Washington Post, provide a calculator to see how much more your road trip will cost in the United States. Just put in your starting point, destination, and the type of car you drive.

Going the other direction, they also show how far you could go today on a 2019 budget with a handful of popular road trips. You’d kind of get stuck in the middle of nowhere.

I don’t drive much these days, but driving down Interstate 5 in California this past weekend had me feeling thankful that I didn’t buy that SUV in 2016.

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US spending on Ukraine

For NYT’s The Upshot, Bianca Pallaro and Alicia Parlapiano break down the United States’ $13.6 billion in emergency spending to help Ukraine against Russia.

They start with an overview treemap and then zoom in on each spending category with a new section. A thumbnail for each section keeps you oriented with each static image.

Over the years, the treemap has been NYT’s clear go-to for showing any kind of spending categories. You can see an evolution from interactive tool meant for exploration and the desktop to this most recent piece made to read and work on mobile. It seems like a pretty good indicator for visualization on the web as a whole.

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All the provisions in the Build Back Better bill

For NYT’s The Upshot, Alicia Parlapiano and Quoctrung Bui outlined all of the provisions of Biden’s Build Back Better bill and where the $2 trillion over 10 years will come from. A treemap provides an overview that sticks to the top of the page as you scroll through the table of line items.

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Rising prices of everything

Using Consumer Price Index, Alyssa Fowers and Rachel Siegel for The Washington Post show how the prices of everyday things rose since 2019. A set of baseline charts show lines moving up much more than one would hope, due to coronavirus and supply chain issues.

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Spending bill in a treemap box

Margot Sanger-Katz and Alicia Parlapiano for NYT’s The Upshot broke down a Democrat spending proposal. I like the lead-in treemap that shows the proposed components and the box that it needs to squeeze into:

I’ve seen treemaps that transition into different sizes, but I don’t think I’ve seen a box drawn on the outside of the treemap for comparison. It feels natural.

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Change in consumer spending since the virus

Consumer spending has shifted dramatically since most people have to stay at home. For The New York Times, Lauren Leatherby and David Gelles show by how much:

All of the charts in this article are based on a New York Times analysis of data from Earnest Research, which tracks and analyzes credit card and debit card purchases of nearly six million people in the United States. While the data does not include cash transactions, and therefore does not reflect all sales, it provides a strong snapshot of the impact of the virus on the economy.

The article also includes breakdowns for the main categories above. The only reason restaurants and entertainment aren’t down more is because delivery services and at-home streaming slightly offset the dip.

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Bloomberg ad spending, relative to other candidates’

Mike Bloomberg’s ad spending might not be that much relative to his own net worth, but compared to other candidates’ spending, it’s a whole lot of money. The Washington Post puts the spending into perspective with a long scroller. Each rectangle represents $100k, and there are “mile markers” along the way to keep you anchored on the scale.

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Paying for Elizabeth Warren’s proposed policies

Elizabeth Warren has big plans, and they would cost a lot with a big shift in government spending. The New York Times breaks it down.

I realize the topic here is important, but NYT’s bubble game is on point in this piece. Check out those transitions as the bubbles funnel into the screen from the top and how the pie-like segments rotate as each segment is highlighted.

Force-directed graphs, for the win, amirite.

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