Vote Run Lead / 2024 / Gender Equality, Politics & Government
For Charting Paths to a Women’s Majority, Vote Run Lead partnered with Graphicacy to transform complex data into an inspiring story that visualizes an accomplishable path to gender equity in state legislatures.
From the right to bodily autonomy to support for working parents, many of today’s hot-button issues directly impact women. Yet, with women making up just one-third of state legislators, a significant number of their voices continue to go unheard.
As an organization that helps women run for office, Vote Run Lead knows how to fix this: Get more women to win the open seats. VRL had the data to prove it, and they wanted women to envision themselves reaching the majority in state legislatures. But how to illustrate this path forward?
To tell the story, VRL returned to partnering with Graphicacy, with whom they’d worked on integrating data into previous campaigns focused on the underrepresentation of women and gender disparities. VRL also wanted to map out what the real and attainable strategic pathways look like for each state in clear and compelling ways.
In creating Charting Paths to a Women’s Majority, Graphicacy visualized the conditions and solutions for each state with an engaging experience that struck the inspirational, pragmatic, and positive tone VRL was striving for.
Graphicacy developed two complementary components. The scrollytelling narrative delivers context while outlining the overarching goals and areas of opportunity. Meanwhile, an interactive data explorer gives users potential strategies and outcomes at the state level.
For the scrollytelling component, Charting Paths to a Women’s Majority uses animation to express the dynamism and promise of the data.
Users can scroll through current conditions around themes like incumbency, open seats, and win rates. They can also take a deeper dive, adjusting inputs for each state to see how changing certain conditions can move women closer to a majority.
After multiple iterations and deep collaboration with VRL, the Graphicacy team met the challenge of telling a multivariate, data-driven story in a dynamic, accessible, and encouraging way. And they did it all on a tight deadline.
“State by state, district by district, Vote Run Lead and Graphicacy worked together to show a clear path to achieving a truly reflective democracy in the United States.”
01 Vote Run Lead
State of My Democracy
Data Management Solutions, Data Visualization, Ideation & Prototyping, Interactive Web Applications, UX/UI Design
02 Vote Run Lead
Visualizing Gender Disparities in the Statehouse
Data Visualization, Interactive Web Applications, Scrollytelling, UX/UI Design
03 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Visualizing Inequality
Data Visualization, Information Design, Interactive Web Applications, Scrollytelling, UX/UI Design
04 Rutgers University: Center for American Women and Politics
Transforming Data About Women, Money, and Politics
Data Visualization, Engineering, Interactive Web Applications, Scrollytelling