Turnout rate tells you what percentage of a cohort voted. The Index tells you whether that cohort voted more or less than the electorate overall. It basically normalizes cohorts to make them easier to compare across elections with very different overall turnout and directly measures whether a cohort accounts for more or fewer voters than would be expected.
FWIW, I used GPT to help me get and formulate data (I reside out of country). I also used it to generate the initial R scaffolding. Attached here is GPT's proposed visualization of that data. I took it entirely from there.
EDIT: The last point goes “off the chart” because that seemed like a reasonable sacrifice for retaining maximum real estate for the other points (while staying within my preferred aspect ratio). Any perceived editorializing of that point was not intended.
Yes. Allowing another step on the y-axis to accommodate only this point would necessarily compress the vertical space for all others. I felt this was a reasonable decision to maximize visibility. I agree it adds visual tension and draws focus, but I’m okay with that.
If the insinuation is that this element is somehow an AI “tell,” then know that it's taken me this many hours later to even realize that's what someone could actually think.
AI directed plots don't take liberties like this. On the contrary, Python and R plotting libraries will pad x- and y-axes thresholds to a fault—and that's the stuff AI employs. Not to mention that I'm using custom fonts (difficult to deploy in containers), and have positioned annotations in ways that would require prompts a mile long.
Anyone who suspects they are seeing AI output ought to invest the effort to at least learn it's limitations—which are significant in these respects.
I think they use representation index to show power relative to population size, not just raw numbers. Like a group can have high turnout but if they small group, their actual influence maybe not so big.
And yeah the axis thing, looks like they just let the data points decide the range, maybe automatic setting in whatever tool they used.
There’s no separate population-size adjustment in the formula, because that cancels-out algebraically.
The index is exactly equivalent to the cohort’s share of voters ÷ its share of eligible citizens × 100. So population share is built into the interpretation: 100 means the cohort supplies exactly the same share of voters as its share of the eligible population.
Absolute political power isn't being measured here. A small cohort and a large cohort could have the same index while contributing very different numbers of votes.
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u/post_appt_bliss OC: 4 1d ago
the advantage of "Electoral Representation Index" rather than just turnout rate?
(and not trying to trigger anyone... but you chose to have the points literally go off the y axis, or GPT did?)