Rhetoric That You Can See

Charles Franklin at Pollster.com posted two charts that show the same data in two dramatically different ways. While both charts are fundamentally true, both are misleading.


The chart above (from Organizing for America) leads us to believe that what we have lost in red is what we have gained in blue.


This second chart looks at the data in another way; Franklin's chart totals the job losses, adding the Obama losses to the Bush losses. Thus, as he admits because he wants to demonstrate how deceptive visual treatment of data can be, even though there were more losses in the last year of Bush's term than in Obama's first year, Obama's first year looks worse.

What the data actually mean is the amount of job loss has slowed under Obama.

"One can think of these two charts as data displays that reveal different aspects of data, but also as graphical political rhetoric," notes Franklin.

As Franklin notes, the first chart indeed shows improvement, while the second one reminds us of how steep a climb we have before we reach full job recovery.