How to center labels over side-by-side bar chart in ggplot2

Question

I'm working in ggplot. I created a bar chart but the labels over the bars are not centered over the bars (see figure).

How do I center each bars' label over its respective bar in this plot?

Here is the code:

df<- structure(list(Cycle = c(1980, 1982, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1990, 
                         1992, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 
                         2014, 2016, 1980, 1982, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, 
                         1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016), 
               Donor_Location = structure(c(1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 
                                            1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 
                                            2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 
                                            2L), .Label = c("In District", "Out of District"), class = "factor"), 
               Count_Percentage_Mean = c(0.167598290871218, 0.124829496296588, 
                                         0.0940731004562636, 0.125521769946444, 0.134545184854301, 
                                         0.221904402021545, 0.241031685849158, 0.284978425863672, 
                                         0.280387277343076, 0.269095218446438, 0.273131304975636, 
                                         0.288912758780087, 0.297134465175358, 0.296786491472909, 
                                         0.292365465524159, 0.303877491711499, 0.249983664094922, 
                                         0.258636305966848, 0.239182241578899, 0.159250631842859, 
                                         0.161311478778858, 0.157209833306125, 0.161853462566676, 
                                         0.174277618030726, 0.251786815739142, 0.318324841334214, 
                                         0.312697665544327, 0.347430615609066, 0.346833684171301, 
                                         0.374139881841685, 0.422610276126137, 0.432433986875512, 
                                         0.424992976111316, 0.429557833404775, 0.443001597806887, 
                                         0.462424440669885, 0.45460402775165, 0.492540191333363)), row.names = c(NA, 
                                                                                                                 -38L), class = "data.frame")


ggplot(df, aes(x = Cycle , y = Count_Percentage_Mean, fill = Donor_Location)) +
  geom_bar(stat = "identity", position = 'dodge') +
  scale_y_continuous(labels = scales::percent_format(accuracy = 1)) +
  geom_text(aes(label=paste(round(Count_Percentage_Mean*100,0), "%", sep = "")), position=position_dodge(width=0.9), vjust=-0.5)

Thank You!

See the second answer to this [question](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40211451/geom-text-how-to-position-the-text-on-bar-as-i-want): "The position_dodge() statement takes a width parameter. To ensure that the text is centred at the end of the bars (i.e., the dodging width for the bars and the text to be the same), give the same width parameter to the position_dodge() statement within geom_bar and within geom_text." — Maël, Dec 02 '21 at 09:55

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 02 '21 at 09:49

Hm. Unfortuantely I can't tell you what's the reason for this issue. Also, I'm not aware of any update of ggplot2 or ... Probably I miss something basic (maybe I need another cup of coffee). Anyway. I had a look at the layer_data and your text labels are simply dodged by only half the width of the bars. Hence, you could achieve your desired result by doubling the width, i.e. use position = position_dodge(width = 1.8) in geom_text

library(ggplot2)

ggplot(df, aes(x = Cycle, y = Count_Percentage_Mean, fill = Donor_Location)) +
  geom_col(position = "dodge") +
  scale_y_continuous(labels = scales::percent_format(accuracy = 1)) +
  geom_text(aes(label = scales::percent(Count_Percentage_Mean, accuracy = 1)), position = position_dodge(width = 1.8), vjust = -0.5)

Great! thank you for your help! This worked! – Sharif Amlani Dec 07 '21 at 20:01 — Sharif Amlani, Dec 07 '21 at 20:01

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 02 '21 at 09:48

Try adjusting position_dodge(width = 2.1) for both geom_bar and geom_text

library(ggplot2)
ggplot(df, aes(x = Cycle , y = Count_Percentage_Mean, fill = Donor_Location)) +
  geom_bar(stat = "identity", position = position_dodge(width = 2.01)) +
  scale_y_continuous(labels = scales::percent_format(accuracy = 1)) +
  geom_text(aes(label = paste(round(Count_Percentage_Mean * 100, 0), "%", sep = "")), 
            position = position_dodge(width = 2.01), vjust = -0.5,
            size = 2)+
  theme(legend.position = "bottom")

^{Created on 2021-12-02 by the reprex package (v2.0.1)}

Awesome! thank you for your help! This solution also worked extremely well! — Sharif Amlani, Dec 07 '21 at 20:02

How to center labels over side-by-side bar chart in ggplot2

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