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Interesting how with all of the amazing data visualizations out there this election year - and they really are amazing - so many viz experts & enthusiasts in my feed, and me also, ended up watching a simple table when it came down to the wire: https://alex.github.io/nyt-2020-election-scraper/battleground-state-changes.html
I spent a lot of time in the BI industry hearing talk about how tables are useless, outdated, etc, etc. But they can have a way of giving us an almost visceral, tangible connection to the raw numbers themselves.
Tables can actually be an incredibly useful complement to charts. 20th century experts like Mary Eleanor Spear & Willard Cope Brinton advocated publishing the table *along with* the chart, when feasible.
So we don't have to pick parties when it comes to data display, and it's certainly not a one party system. We don't have to choose one form or the other - we can vote for both charts, tables, and for that matter, raw numbers, diagrams, sketches, you name it.
Each have their own advantage and disadvantage. It's easy to point out only the shortcomings of a particular form, and tables certainly have their shortcomings. It's in the combination of forms that we have the best chance of seeing what the heck's going on.
Relevant thoughts from Barbara Tversky's excellent book 'Mind in Motion'.
As a matter of historical context, here's one example of what was being taught about the interplay of charts & tables way back in 1919. From "Chartography in Ten Lessons" by Frank Julian Warne: https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=8SQoAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA38
Just because it's old doesn't mean it's right, and Warne's advice here admittedly came prior to the era of really massive data sets (I need to think of a catchy phrase for that... ;)) but the general idea that tables have their place is what I take away from it all.
