As the November election approaches, the AP’s election coverage focuses on revealing the top issues on voters’ minds. By analyzing Google search data, the AP’s election graphics team identified key issues concerning Americans. The team collaborated with Google to visualize this data in engaging and informative ways for readers and election visual imagery licensing customers.
The creation of the Google Trends tracker was a collaborative effort involving product engineer Pablo Barria Urenda, who set up a data pipeline to update the tracker weekly. Maya Sweedler contributed written content for the charts, provided feedback on topic selection, and assisted with tagging. Designers Humera Lodhi and Shelly Cheng created custom visualizations, including a bump chart displaying the changing rankings of search topics and maps showing geographic search patterns at the state and county levels. Attention was given to labeling, legends, and scaling to ensure the data was easily understandable to the audience.
This project reflects the AP’s ability to convey data-driven stories in a modern and accessible style, going beyond traditional formats.
For their contribution to providing voters with essential election information through well-presented data, Cheng, Lodhi, Urenda, and Sweedler are the recipients of the Best of AP: First Winner award this week.
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Article Source
https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/best-of-the-week/first-winner/2024/new-google-trends-tracker-reveals-whats-top-of-mind-for-american-voters/