Previewing election day with data

How has data been used in advance of the election season? We've been looking for good data visualizations and data-driven reporting centered on the upcoming elections. Below is what we've found. Help add to our list by emailing suggestions to tony@ire.org or tweeting us @IRE_NICAR.

The Washington Post
The Post's 2012 election map shows what's still in play for the presidential, senate, house and governor races, along with a breakdown by income, race, urban vs. rural, marriage rigthts and swing states. 

The New York Times
The Times' Election 2012 package includes, among many other facets, a tool to build your own paths to victory, a swing state tracker and a comparison of the two candidates' money raised and money spent. Also from the Times are these interactives: Over the decades, whow the states have shifted and 512 paths to the White House.

NPR
This swing state scorecard offers an interactive explanation of various winning scenarios.

The Wall Street Journal
In the interactive Swing Nation, the Wall Street Journal examines swing counties within swing states, pairing individual perspectives with data characterizing the issues at play in those counties.

ProPublica
Campaign 2012: Revealing dark money and big data has breakdowns of the Super PACs' biggest donors, an untangling of who's making money off of campaign spending, and a tracker of where and how PACs are spending. ProPublica also offers this explanation of how nonprofit groups funnel dark money into campaigns.

The Center for Public Integrity
Consider the Source offers a database of profiles on political action committees, donors and politically active nonprofits. 

The Charlotte Observer
The newspaper analyzed early voting data to find that Romney faces a deficit after early turnouts.

The Tennessean
Looking at party leaning in varous precincts, the newspaper writes that how Tennesseans vote depends a lot on where they live.

The Dallas Morning News
This Google Map shows where early voters turn out in the Dallas area.

Mother Jones
The magazine offers this map of spending by Charles and David Koch and this map of voter suppression and poll problems.

The Frederick News Post
The paper from Maryland used Tableau to create this visualization of how county residents give to campaigns in their area.

NBC Bay Area
In its piece Dead and Still Voting, the investigative team cross-referenced the social security death master file with California's voter rolls to find thousands of dead Californians still eligible to vote.

The Cincinnati Enquirer
The paper has been tracking Ohio's voting problems for more than a year, and today has a real-time problem tracker using Google Fusion Tables field work using reporters and more than 30 interns from local universities.