Our fundamental research on visualization and analysis tools for dynamic ad-hoc networks has many potential applications, including wireless communications networks, traffic management, and intelligence analysis.  We have been exploring one application in particular, the flow of money through large transactional networks, with a focus on the networks of campaign contributions.

We have applied some of our research results to a very large database of financial transactions -- the 2008 federal elections campaign contribution database.  This dataset represents millions of financial transactions between millions of individuals and organizations.  Our goal was to see if we could visually tame this vast and complex network to produce simple and intuitive views that convey patterns within the flow of money.  Under campaign finance regulations, this also allows us to track independent expenditures for or against candidates or issues. 

We have put together a short video that shows the flow of campaign contributions and expenditures for or against candidates during the 2008 presidential campaign.  The video shows how millions of campaign contributions flow from individuals and organizations to support candidates during the course of 2008.  The key features to watch in this video are shown in the snapshot below.  As the election season unfolds, you will see the pool of contributions grow and move towards the more successful candidates, somewhat analagous to gravity wells reflecting political density.

Here now is the web-quality video showing millions of transactions among thousands of contributors in a single, easy to understand picture.  Some of the key features to observe are: 1) contributions to the Democrat cadidates are initially spread between them, and then break decisively for Obama as he gains traction, 2) Ron Paul's small but stable core of support, 3) heavy Republican RNC & NRCC expenditures against the Democrats early, followed by a swing to spending in support of McCain around April 2008.  Many more features can be uncovered through viewing this, especially when combined with our interactive drill down and analysis tools.

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The images and videos from this page are from both our rich desktop and web-based visualization applications, both of which work off of our distributed visual client - data server architecture for scalable information visualization.  Additional interactive versions of our web-based visualization tools can also be seen at ConnectionFlow.com , a web site devoted to visualizations of campaign finance transactions.

For the ultimate in scalability demonstration, we were able to condense an entire election cycle of millions of contributions into a single animated view on an iPhone that conveys the major patterns of campaign contributions for the cycle.  Ask us to show it to you next time we meet up!