Making the Statehouse Her House with Vote Run Lead
Graphicacy’s data visualization highlights urgent need for action on gender disparities in state government
Women represent 51% of America’s current population but just 31% of state legislatures. Only Nevada has a female majority legislature. VoteRunLead is on a mission to correct the imbalance.
The organization has trained women to run for office — and win — at every level of government since 2014. In 2021, Vote Run Lead collaborated with data visualization firm Graphicacy to visually tell the story of RUN/51, its boldest initiative to date.
RUN/51 aims to establish female majorities in every state legislature by 2031. Initial efforts will target tipping the scales in three key states — Georgia, Minnesota, and New York — over the course of just two election cycles. This work and the resulting lessons will inform a playbook for all 50 states to follow.
“We’re prioritizing state legislatures because that’s where many of the policies originate that affect women and families the most,” said Vote Run Lead Chief Operations Officer Amanda O’Donnell. “There are lots of opportunities at the state level for women to get involved, demonstrate their leadership ability, and prepare for roles at the federal level if they choose. State legislatures are essentially laboratories of democracy.”
Generating buzz
Much like an electoral campaign, RUN/51 requires a steady stream of support, resources, and awareness to succeed. To that end, Vote Run Lead engaged Graphicacy to create a compelling, data-driven story that draws attention to gender discrepancies while generating excitement around RUN/51 as the solution.
“I was impressed by how quickly the Graphicacy team grasped what we were trying to do,” O’Donnell said. “Storytelling is at the heart of the training we do with potential candidates. Graphicacy’s approach felt like a natural extension of that. They zeroed in on the most impactful pieces of data.”
“The RUN/51 project aligns with our mission to Visualize a Better World,” said Graphicacy Director of Operations Josh Nerpel. “So much of our work illustrates the need for and impact of advocates like Vote Run Lead, who work to promote equity and a more just, inclusive democracy. We’re honored to help them literally change the gender imbalance of American politics.”
Graphicacy started the project with a blank slate and a short deadline. During an in-depth discovery process, the team speedily parsed a trove of data from multiple sources to identify trends and possible narratives that would inspire audiences to act. From a long list of ideas, Graphicacy and Vote Run Lead agreed upon an interactive scrollytelling approach for the RUN/51 landing page that depicts both the current and future state of gender inequity in state legislatures.
Sharing a sense of urgency
Informed by historic data for statehouse gender composition from Rutgers University’s Center for American Women in Politics, Graphicacy developed a narrative sequence spelling out the gravity of the problem and the goals of RUN/51. In the background, graphics for the three pilot states support the text.
Once users reach the bottom of the page, they unlock a comparative line graph they can hover over to reveal the percentages of female legislators for all 50 statehouses. Just as important, they see projections for how long it will take each statehouse to reach a 51% majority of women at the current pace of progress.
“For many states, the data shows we’ll need to wait multiple generations, and that’s unacceptable,” O’Donnell said. “With this tool, users can see the urgency and how they can make a difference through RUN/51.”
Shareability was another important factor for the visualization. “So many women come to our programs by way of friend referrals,” O’Donnell said. “Because women can share this visualization across their networks and social media, it has the power to significantly expand our pipeline of candidates and supporters. We will also use this during meetings with potential funders to answer the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of our work. It’s a very powerful conversation starter.”
Sprinting to the finish
Vote Run Lead hoped to launch their RUN/51 campaign as quickly as possible, given the urgency of the issue. Graphicacy obliged, moving the scrollytelling visualization from concept to completion in less than eight weeks.
“We worked in sprints, sharing and getting feedback on versions and storyboards that demonstrated the animation,” said Graphicacy Senior Information Designer Carni Klirs. “When it came time to finalize the design and move to the engineering phase, by working in a collaborative and iterative fashion, our team and Vote Run Lead had a shared understanding of the contours of what we were building. This allowed us to move quickly and confidently to deliver a polished final product.”
“When it came to engineering, we chose react-scrollama, an open-source scrollytelling library, to trigger the changes from step to step,” said Graphicacy Senior Data Visualization Engineer Sarah Hodges. “We used react-spring for animating between the current and future time frames and with the help of D3, made sure that the user interaction in the last step was highly performant.“
“Graphicacy helped us prioritize what we could accomplish by our desired launch date,” O’Donnell said. “At every step of the way, they were much more like a partner than a vendor.”
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Graphicacy partners with clients to tell engaging stories with data. Graphicacy’s team combines storytelling, thoughtful human-centered design and deep technical capabilities to build and deploy strategic, data-rich digital projects. Graphicacy’s team has created data visualizations and infographics for top-tier organizations and companies, domestically and internationally, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, the World Bank, the Center for American Progress, the Anti-Defamation League, and many others.
