True Views: Mapping Public Opinion

The map allows users to select geographies and questions to see how opinion varies.

To announce the new tool, Harvard and the Bloomberg Center on the Cities hosted an in-person panel event.

Client: Harvard Election Law Clinic

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TrueViews is an innovative data visualization platform that illuminates American political perspectives through precise public opinion mapping. By providing granular insights across geographic regions, the platform helps bridge the gap between elected officials and their constituents, offering unprecedented transparency into policy preferences at local, state, and national levels.

The project began with the GreenInfo Network team becoming familiar with the TrueViews data as well as the needs as the tool and goals for the final product. Based on this information, GreenInfo Network developed user research surveys and interviews which gathered detailed insights into how users anticipate using the tool in their day-to-day work. The user research supported understanding user needs and the potential impact of how the TrueViews could impact user’s professional activities. The user research also supported defining and documenting stakeholders' expectations, which helped guide the screening, recruitment, and assessment processes of the user research. The comprehensive engagement approach of surveys and interviews provided invaluable feedback for refining the tool and ensuring the prototype and final build designs met the needs of the intended audience.

The prototype design process utilized user insights to produce wireframes of the tool’s pages and interactive features. GreenInfo Network included accessible design considerations during the prototyping design iterations as well, to ensure that the final build would incorporate the accessible data visualizations that provide a similar experience to the interactive map.

Additionally, GreenInfo Network created branding assets for the platform, including the TrueViews logo design alongside the color, typeface, and other branding choices.

Developed in collaboration with leading researchers from Harvard Law School, Harvard Kennedy School, and George Washington University, TrueViews transforms complex polling data into actionable insights. The platform synthesizes responses from over one million Americans across 18 national surveys (2009-2023), presenting them through an intuitive, interactive map interface.

Users can explore public sentiment across 32 distinct policy domains, including:

Criminal justice reform
Gun control legislation
Healthcare policy
Environmental regulations
Economic initiatives

The platform addresses a critical challenge in American democracy: the frequent misalignment between legislative decisions and constituent preferences. As Professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos, project co-creator, notes, TrueViews reveals nuanced patterns in public opinion that challenge conventional narratives about political polarization. This insight enables:

More informed policy-making
Evidence-based advocacy
Enhanced democratic representation
Better-targeted constituent engagement

Technical Implementation:

Our engineering team deployed a sophisticated technical architecture optimized for performance and scalability:

Data Processing: Custom Python pipelines transform raw survey data and Census TIGER geometries into efficient vector tiles
Storage & Delivery: Amazon S3 storage with CloudFront CDN ensures robust, low-latency access worldwide
Vector Tiles: PMTiles format enables near-instantaneous rendering of complex geographic data
Automation: Streamlined deployment and updates through integrated Bash/Python scripting

Results: While the platform's creators emphasize careful interpretation of local-level data, TrueViews represents a significant advancement in evidence-based governance. The tool equips legislators, advocacy groups, and citizens with reliable data to inform policy discussions and legislative initiatives.

Services: Interactive Solutions, Applications Development, Web Mapping, Website Design, Design Research

Project Years: 2024