Socialist Party (SP) lies with graph in advance to elections

It’s a classic. Messing with y-axis by not starting at zero. At first I looked at the difference between the years 2012–2013 and saw that the 2012 bar fitted at least four times in the 2013 bar. That adds up to €880,- not to €350,-. You see it all the time (Fox.com is king in this), starting the y-axis not at zero increases the emphasis on the upsweep.

The SP shared this graph on social media and it was widely accepted. The headline of the graph says: “The explosion of the own risk contribution thanks to:” followed by the party leaders who supported these changes.

This is a repost and part 1 of the series Data Visualisation Redesigned for the Better.

For more redesigns and other data journalism/visualisation related articles, go to my blog:

Do you stumble upon a crappy graph? Please let me know! Cheers 🙂