Vote With Your Dollars! - Corporate Political Contributions infographic

Vote With Your Dollars, is a corporate political contributions map.  Using the public data from the Center for Responsive Politics (2004-2008), GoodGuide.com has plotted the balance of contributions from companies.  Mouse-over a specific company logo to see the detailed data (like Dell above).

View the political contributions of your favorite companies and see how you vote with your dollars.  The data is surprising!

You can choose specific companies or business sectors, and then change the sort order.  Here is the retail sector sorted by Most Democratic Leaning:

Thanks Anthony for sending in the link.  Sorry it took so long to get posted.

ANC Spending infographic

Diaan Minhardt created this simple infographic for his blog, Dreamfoundry, to show how money being spend on new cars for government officials could have been spent differently to build houses.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the rivers of money haemorrhaging out of the government coffers for idiotic reasons for some time now. What I saw inspired me to create this very simple infographic.

Thanks Diaan!

Left vs. Right Ideology Concept Map

David McCandless and Stefanie Posavec from Information Is Beautiful have created this Left vs. Right concept map to help explain the differences in political opinions.

Of course, the political spectrum is not quite so polarised. Actually, it’s more of a diamond shape, apparently. But this is how it’s mostly presented via the media – left wing vs. right wing, liberal vs. conservative, Labour vs Tory. And perhaps in our minds too… 

This kind of visual approach to mapping concepts really excites me. I like the way it coaxes me to entertain two apparently contradictory value systems at the same time. Or, in other words, I like the way it f**ks with my head.

Using this blank template, David and Stefanie created two versions  One for the U.S. (top) and one for the World (below).

There are two versions with different colours: a US and a World version. This is because the US and Switzerland are the only countries in the world where red = right wing and blue = left wing. Grrr!

Found on VizWorld and Information Is Beautiful.

Obama's Worldwide Stamps of Approval infographic

From our friends at GOOD transparency, is a simple infographic showing President Obama's worldwide approval rating.  I like the use of stamps to help identify the countries around the world, and that the order is representative of highest approval to lowest approval ratings.  I think this graphic lacks the use of illustration to convey the data.  The actual approval ratings are only communicated with the numbers without any graphic representation.

During the campaign, President Obama argued that his election would help restore the image the rest of the world has of United States.  In the six months since his election, his approval ratings at home have slipped, though they remain high. Around the rest of the world, opinion is mixed. A recent study by WorldPublicOpinion.org asked people in 21 countries whether they had confidence that Obama would “do the right thing” when it came to world affairs. Our latest Transparency is a look at their responses.

One other criticism would be that the text implies that we should be looking at how worldwide opinion has changed since Obama's election, but the data is actually only a snapshot of opinions six months after the election.  No indication is this is higher or lower than the opinions at the time of his election.

A collaboration between GOOD and Michael Newhouse at Newhouse Design.

Thanks Michelle for the link!

American health care on (4) napkins

Dan Roam, author of Back of the Napkin, has posted a napkin explanation of the American Health Care debate on his blog.  It took him 4 napkins to complete his explanation, but I think he did a really good job trying to help people understand a very complex issue.

He has also published a slideshow of the complete series up on SlideShare.net

Check out Dan's great book, Back of the Napkin.

NEW Death and Taxes 2010 poster!!

First, Jess from WallStats.com has released the 2010 Death & Taxes poster.  This is one of the best infographic examples today.  It's extremely informative, and the topic has a very wide reach.  The Death & Taxes poster from 2007 was my initial post on Cool Infographics, so I'm very excited to see this update.   Now the 2010 version is available to purchase as a poster here. Great job Jess!

Second, I'm really impressed by the viewer code for the poster. It's from Zoomorama.com, and lets me embed the interactive viewer.  The built-in zoom is pretty nice, but the Quick Find index on the left side is the best part.

One Trillion Dollars Visualized [infographic video]

New video based on the infographics from our friend, Jess Bachman, from WallStats.com!  Created by/for Mint.com.

Trillion is the new Billion!

Free The Vote! (Spanish)

Infographic video from NSM in Santiago de Chile for the Free The Vote Campaign. I don't speak Spanish, so I'm not exactly sure what it says...

Thanks Marco, for broadening my horizons!

Visualizing the Stimulus Bill

Here's a great, simple graphic that breaks down the stimulus bill.

Nicholas Rapp does some great infographic design work.  Check out some of his other work at nicolasrapp.com

Taking Apart the $819B Stimulus Package

Very detailed infographic from the Washington Post showing how the proposed stimulus package is broken out between ares of spending and tax cuts.

The centerpiece of President Obama's domestic agenda is an $819 billion economic stimulus plan. The Senate will consider the measure this week, with an eye toward the amount of tax cuts and spending. Republicans and Democrats spar over what to consider a tax cut. An analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office tallies the tax-cut portion to be significantly less than the one-third Democrats claim it to be.

SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office | Reporting by Karen Yourish, graphic by Laura Stanton - The Washington Post - February 01, 2009