qgis - Why would an SVG output from CartoDB look "squished" when the map doesn't?

I have a map of zipcodes in San Francisco that I plotted on CartoDB.The CartoDB view looks about like I expected:

But when I had CartoDB generate an SVG, the proportions are way off.

I took the same data to QGis and got the exact same distortion when I output an SVG. What on earth is going on here and how do I fix it?

Answer

I would say this is due to the data being displayed on CartoDB in Web Mercator.

The underlying data is stored in WGS84, so when you export to SVG, you're likely displaying that data in WGS84 in QGIS.

Try switching your coordinate system in QGIS to Web Mercator and see what it looks like.

(hint: click the EPSG:4326 button in the bottom-right of QGIS > Enable 'on the fly' CRS transformation > Choose WGS84 / Psuedo Mercator (EPSG: 3857)