The Guardian pushed the limits of election-night data display this week with a relief map of the Florida primary vote.
They didn't push far enough.
As promised: Live election results in True 3-D.
(To avoid blog lag, I've put the live version here.)
You need a current browser to see it. Recent versions of Chrome and Firefox work. Safari does, too, if you nudge it.
With any luck, the counties shall grow as the vote rolls in tonight.
For those interested, I built it in Processing and use Processing.js to put it on the web. You're welcome to embed it if you wish. Just drop me a note or comment that you did.
UPDATE: My data-fetching code is a little wonky. Refresh the page to ensure the latest results!
UPDATE 2: I actually don't believe this is the best way to present numeric data. Representing numeric scale with a 3D drawing on a 2D surface is exceptionally tricky and should probably be avoided. Also, there are no rollovers or other clarifying information -- like county names and vote counts.
That said, I like the idea that some data sets might be worth spinning, touching and flying through. So maybe this is my first step in that direction.
Plus, it was fun.
UPDATE 3: By request, here is the Processing sketch upon which this was built.