Election 2016

You've heard from the candidates—but what does the data say? Join us as we explore the data stories behind the US elections. And do check back as we'll continue to update our gallery.

The political divide has doubled in recent years

In recent years, the political divide between Democrats and Republicans has doubled, as this viz by Robert Rouse shows. Robert visualized the Pew Research Center's survey data, which shows members of both parties moved away from center in recent years. Click on #2 to compute your own ideological score and see how you stack up against other survey respondents.




Rift in Senate now greater than ever

It's not just the general public that's become more polarized, says Hamid Hajebian. The ideology gap between US senators across the aisle has steadily grown to double its size since the Truman administration. And productivity appears to be diminishing as a result. From 2011 to 2012, the Senate passed just 10 percent of the bills introduced compared to 52% from 1947 to 1948.




Media outlets are aligning views on Trump

In recent months, conservative and liberal media outlets have adopted similar views on Trump, according to this sentiment analysis by the Data Face.
This analysis examines median sentiment conveyed in opinion articles in eight major media outlets.




Trump gets more media mentions

How and how much has mainstream media covered Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump? This viz looks at tweets from five major broadcast networks for one month (Aug. 1 to Sept. 1). During that time, the networks sent 966 more tweets about Trump.




The polls don't all agree—sometimes by a lot

What do the polls say? It depends on which source you ask, and on which day. As Adam Crahen shows in this mobile-friendly viz, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were polling within a few points of each other. On the following day, a Goucher College poll had Clinton leading by 35 points. Then on the very next day, a Talk Business & Politics-Hendrix College poll had Trump in the lead by 21 points. Adam's poll tracker refreshes daily.





On The Tonight Show, mentions of Trump significantly boost views

Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama, Ted Cruz, and Bernie Sanders have all appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. And for every person, the most-watched Tonight Show video on YouTube included some focus on Trump. (In the case of Trump, he interviewed himself, played by Fallon, in the mirror. Several others had phone calls with Trump, also played by Fallon.) Joey Silva scraped a year's worth of data from the show's YouTube channel to create this viz. Click on the data points to watch the corresponding YouTube video in the viz.



Both candidates' speeches are fairly easy to understand

Which candidate is easier to understand? Depends what they're talking about, according to an analysis of their speeches using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test. When they talk about economic policy, Trump talks at a tenth-grade reading level while Clinton talks at an eighth-grade reading level. But when they talk about foreign policy, they're both at an eighth-grade level.





Only one recent president left office with a higher approval rating

When the going gets tough, presidential approval ratings drop, says Dustin Cabral. "Most presidents start with high approval ratings; however, the majority drop significantly by the time they leave office," he says. The data shows this downward pattern for almost every president since 1941 (Bill Clinton is the lone exception). But while some presidents' ratings bounce back up over time, others never recover from their initial decline. Check out Harry S. Truman, who started with the highest approval rating on the chart(91%), then dipped to the lowest (22%).



Find out whether your friends and co-workers contribute

Which campaign did your boss contribute to? Your neighbor? This searchable dashboard looks to FEC data for the answers.