Daniel Donner
@donnermaps.bsky.social
Contributor @the-downballot.com. Focusing on data, maps, and demographics. Find our data (and the CD hexmap template!) at https://the-db.co/data
Here’s an old slide on late volatility in presidential primary/caucus preferences. Common to have lots of movement in the last week, including diffs between final polls and results. Partly by real change, & partly b/c pollsters have to guesstimate who might turn out & weight their results by that.
20% of Americans say it's extremely or very important for schools in the US to offer Mandarin classes, but only 3% of schools actually do offer Mandarin classes. www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...
The seat-quality gap is a big story. - 54% of Dem tossup-seat nominees are women, vs. just 15% (2 candidates) for the GOP (both incumbents). - Women are 44% of Dem's solid blue nominees, vs 14% of GOP's solid red nominees.
In primaries through 6/30, candidate supply still skews male everywhere, but far more so for the GOP. - Women are 33% of Dem primary candidates vs. 20% of GOP candidates. - Women are 44% of Dem general-election nominees, but only 18% of GOP nominees.
Big primary data drop today w/@fiftyplusone.news ! Which political endorsements are working in 2026? Our new story examines how Democratic and Republican organizations are faring. OG 538 folks will know it! TY to @gelliottmorris.com and 50+1 for helping us keep the "PRIMARY PROJECT" alive!
FiftyPlusOne.news@fiftyplusone.news · 5d ago50+1 is very happy to publish this analysis of 2026 primary candidates from @meredithconroy.bsky.social @tsyang27.bsky.social & Cooper Burton, following the tradition of similar projects from FiveThirtyEight. What types of candidates are winning 2026 primaries? blog.fiftyplusone.news/p/primary-pr...
New from me: Until recently, the gap between comfortably-off and just-getting-started could plausibly be crossed in a decade or two of hard work. Growth in asset prices means that’s no longer true: even a lifetime of striving doesn’t offer a realistic prospect of feeling you’ve “made it”.
Here's a 🎁 link (no paywall) in case anyone needs it. The article is indeed quite interesting. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/u...
How the Pro-Trump Media Ecosystem Is Splintering Ahead of the Midterms (Gift Article)
Once united in support of President Trump, right-wing influencers are embroiled in feuds and losing viewers, creating a problem for Republicans in the midterm elections.
nytimes.com
Bordeaux, France, has now recorded more days above 40°C in 2026 alone than during the entire 105-year period from 1920 (when observations began) to 2025. This is deeply shocking.
We've got a fantastic announcement: The Downballot has just released a new version of our one-of-a-kind "hexmap," which shows every congressional district as the same size. @donnermaps.bsky.social has been hard at work updating it for all 10 states with new maps. Check it out here! 🧵
The Downballot releases our latest House 'hexmap,' updated for redistricting
By making every district the same size, we eliminate that misleading sea of red
the-downballot.com
If illiteracy is inability to read, and innumeracy is inability to process numbers, what is inability to process geography called? And why, of all places, is this trait popping up at the highest levels of the State Department? emilysbass.substack.com/p/the-us-sta...
The US State Department Redraws the Map of Africa at the AIDS2026 Conference
And rewrites history, too. All before the official opening.
emilysbass.substack.com
Click any node or connection in the Trump crypto empire map to open its panel and view explanatory annotations and citations. Toggle the income overlay to see financial-disclosure figures from the most recent filings. Search for entities, or filter by category. map.citationneeded.news
New at the Strength In Numbers Data Lab: How pollsters weight by party ID is influencing Democrats' midterm standing. Different methodologies give a margin anywhere between D+7 and D+10 (among registered voters — likely even higher among likely voters). www.gelliottmorris.com/p/2026-07-23...
Democrats' edge in midterms polling depends on how pollsters weight by party
What would our Strength In Numbers polling say if we weighted our samples by different targets for party identity?
gelliottmorris.com
weather-replay.climate.copernicus.eu How did I not know about this it is amazing. So useful. 🌊
Weather Replay
Explore hourly global weather data since 1940 powered by the ERA5 reanalysis from ECMWF.
weather-replay.climate.copernicus.eu
I cross-referenced my database of candidates against credible voter fraud cases. GOP politicians are implicated at 50x–38,000x the general public's rate. Yet even if every American voted with the integrity of a GOP candidate, it still wouldn't come close to justifying making voting one iota harder.
People are gonna fucking hate this if it actually happens. Enjoy all these post 8am sunrises
Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · 3w agoThe House overwhelmingly voted to pass a bill to make daylight saving time permanent
NEW from @pewresearch.org: Political party affiliation in the US, 2020-2026, based on the National Public Opinion Reference Survey (paper/phone/online survey conducted January-June 2026 among 5,511 US adults) www.pewresearch.org/politics/fac...
Here @fil.rezo.net reproduces @climatecasino.net’s chart, using warped gridlines to represent both the absolute temperature and the deviation from the historical mean for each day of the year. new.observablehq.com/@fil/godzill...
Prof. Eliot Jacobson@climatecasino.net · 4w agoBreaking News! Code: y-axis alert. Nino 3.4 SST is now up to 3.63 SD above the 1991-2020 baseline, about 1-in-7000 in the absence of anthropogenic warming. There's not enough room in a single post to express just how crazy this is. Please read: climatecasino.substack.com/p/some-monst...
INTERACTIVE: New from @amowreader.com for @nbcnews.com, a gas price cost calculator that lets you figure out how much more you've paid for gas since the start of the Iran war. #dataViz www.nbcnews.com/data-graphic...
I've spent the last two months putting together this exhaustive analysis of the New York Times coverage of trans people. It covers 3,242 articles over 12 years. In 2022, the NYT shifted towards a hostile stance towards trans people in their framing. www.thedissident.news/exclusive-ho...
Exclusive: How The New York Times Changed Its Coverage of Trans People
An exhaustive analysis of over 3,242 articles by the New York Times covering transgender issues from 2014-2026 revealed a stark shift towards hostile framing in 2022. In January 2015, the New York Ti...
thedissident.news
This year, at least 33 states and D.C. will recognize Juneteenth with a paid day off for most state government workers. Is #Juneteenth a day off in your state? Let us know and comment what state you’re in.
This might be one of the funniest chart about energy scenarios I’ve seen. You can hardly see “actual” for gas
When Trump went to war with Iran, I watched every speech anyone in the administration gave and made a chart of every reason given for going to war "Eliminate ballistic capability" was the #1 reason given: more even than preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon
Iran War Reasons Chart.xlsx
docs.google.com
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2mo agoTrump endorses Iran having ballistic missiles: "I'm saying that if other countries have them, it's a little unfair for them not to have some"
I guess one difference between Jim Crow then and Jim Crow now is that we have cool graphics to show how it's done.
Solar just produced more electricity than coal in the US for the first month ever and it won't be the last... Over the last two decades, the role of coal and solar in the US mix has changed drastically May 2006: 🪨 48%, ☀️ 0% May 2016: 🪨 26%, ☀️ 2% May 2026: 🪨 12%, ☀️ 13%
The impact of the USAID shutdown on Africa, as seen from space and on the ground. M. Nicolini and I study the effects of the aid cuts by linking GODAD data on USAID projects to satellite-based measures of economic activity and IPC food insecurity indicators. 👉 papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... 1/11
This is something I have never seen before on satellite. Clouds perfectly outlining roads. Just incredibly neat imagery of Houston, Texas this morning. Massive shoutout to Ethan Mok who discovered it (on Twitter).
how's this year compares to past years when it comes to stories about gas prices, easily beating out 2022
“.. we have not seen the market this concentrated around a single theme in 150 years.” - Bianco, on B of A’s May 22 chart:
