Political Visualization in Cesium.js

Step 1. Get the data & Take a peak

Download Counties and Congressional Districts

Unzip them both to the data/ directory

Download QGIS (available for all platforms)

Open up a shape file from both downloads and take a look at it and its features

Step 2. Install Postgres and PostGIS and convert our data boundries to SQL

brew install postgresql postgis or download postgres.app

Run the convertor:

shp2pgsql -s SRID cb_2016_us_county_500k.shp public.counties > counties.sql
shp2pgsql -s SRID cb_2016_us_cd115_500k.shp public.districts > districts.sql

Get yourself a database and load it in PSQL

createdb politics
psql -d politics -c "CREATE EXTENSION postgis;"
psql -d politics -f counties.sql
psql -d politics -f districts.sql
psql -d politics -c "CREATE INDEX idx_counties_geom ON counties USING gist(geom);"
psql -d politics -c "CREATE INDEX idx_districts_geom ON districts USING gist(geom);"

Now you can create a PostGIS connection in QGis and verify the data imported

Step 3. Install Mapnik and Tilstache

brew install memcached
brew install mapnik
pip install mapnik
easy_install tilestache
easy_install python_memcached

Run tiles/map.sh and visit 127.0.0.1:8010/counties/#4/59.82/-373.98 to verify our map.

Step 4: Augment our data

Download the 2016 Electrion results CSV from [https://github.com/john-guerra/US_Elections_Results](Github Repo)

Load and run the jupyter notebook in the data directory.

Step 5: FrontEnd Examples

Run npm install and npm start to run each

• frontend-1 - Cesium Hello World
• frontend-2 - Custom Imagery Provider
• frontend-3 - Adding entities and fly-in

Step 6: Extensions!

• Do something cool with the districts table and the legislators repos