Strategic #DataViz Can Tell Compelling Subliminal Stories (cc: @TheFix, @FixAaron)

Aaron Blake, blogger at The Fix at the Washington Post, links today (and publishes) to a data visualization of the distribution of wealth among members of both chambers of Congress, a visualization created by University of California at Santa Cruz sociology professor Bill Domhoff (Domhoff is also a well-known psychologist*):

Blake’s Post headline is “Why people hate Congress, in one chart.” Indeed, people in both the tea party and Occupy movements are disenchanted with how money plays in electoral politics and the creation of public policy.

But the disingenuousness of this particular chart underscores the need for better strategic creative work in right-of-center advocacy organizations. The chart purports to describe the distribution of wealth in Congress, and it does so when taken at face value. The deliberately chosen red vs. blue color scheme tells a very different subliminal story, however: Republicans (red) are wealthy (and you should therefore hate them), and Democrats (blue) are not wealthy (just like you, which is why you should support them).

If you don’t make your living thinking strategically about political communications, this might not have jumped out at you. But this is a very clever and very deceptive messaging tactic. If Democrats, who have hired psychologists* like Drew Westen for quite some time now as strategic message consultants, are going to use this type of tactic, then Republicans and pro-liberty advocacy organizations need to take a page from this playbook quickly. We certainly can’t rely on the media to apply the kind of scrutiny that pulls back the curtain for casual political observers.

Update

Alex Lundry, VP & Director of Research at TargetPoint Consulting, a right-of-center dataviz guru if ever there was one, sends along the following note in an email:

Nearly everyone who encounters this chart misreads it.  It does NOT show how rich Congress is.  Read the title carefully and you’ll see that this is actually visualizes the wealth distribution of ALL Americans as a percent of Congress.  It doesn’t even show what the WaPo thinks it does!

Blake has since removed the graphic from the Washington Post site, an added bonus if you ask me.