Visualization of Roll Call Data for Supporting Analyses of Political Profiles

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a web-based application where the user can instantiate multiple, coordinated panels for exploring data concerning the votes of representatives in Brazil's lower legislative house (the Chamber of Deputies). Open data about roll calls made available by the Chamber allowed us to build a set of interactive visualizations to let users explore deputies' votes and build an understanding of their political profiles. Based on the set of roll call voting results from 1991 to 2016, our application displays the political behaviour of parties in a timeline from which users can select periods and instantiate panels showing the political spectrum of deputies using different methods of dimensionality reduction. Deputies can be separated in clusters based on their position in the political spectrum, and other panels can be instantiated showing details about each cluster. Users can select parts of the timeline and simultaneously analyze the behavior of parties and one or more deputies. Roll calls are represented as a combination of heatmaps and histograms. We illustrate the use of the different visualization techniques in a case study on party cohesiveness over time.