Election results, updated and upgraded

It continues to grow

Even after nearly two decades of working on the internet, I don’t always know for sure what’s going to catch on and go viral. Such was the case for Election Hub (I’m putting it in capital letters, it’s a proper noun now), the massive-yet-simple election results tracker that I launched last weekend.

Thanks to some key retweets and shares, the site has received tens of thousands of visits and bookmarks, shares and endorsements from prominent politicos, and a request from a major global news agency to borrow real-time graphics.

This little heart surgery convalescence project has blown up; with so many people set to use it on Election Night, I’ve been working to make additions and improvements to ensure it’s as complete and operational as possible. That means a few things:

First, I’ve added a new separate site for ballot initiatives, which will track around 150 referenda on things like voting rights, abortion, health care, affordable housing, data centers, and the various attempts to punish trans people. You can find the initiative section here.

Second, I’ve increased the frequency of every race update so that they’ll be updated every 15 minutes all through Election Night. They’ll be pulling from official state voting total sites as well as the AP, NYT, and other media counts, so you won’t have to go anywhere else to find the results or figure out what they mean in terms of flips, majorities, and power.

This goes for every race: Senate, Congress, governorship, state legislature, and ballot initiative races. If I have capacity, I’ll try to add others, like attorneys general.

Also: Doing these things, it turns out, is not cheap, due to data usage and backend capacity requirements for so many ongoing automated checks. Because I’ve turned off paid subscriptions to the newsletter while I recover from my heart surgery, I’m dipping into my own pocket to pay for this project, which is completely free to use and will not make a dime. As a result, I’ve started a fundraiser for the site’s operation, in case anybody wants to kick in to defray the cost. No pressure, though!

Here’s what you need to know about how the sites work:

• The site will automatically update every race — yes, up and down the ballot — every 15 minutes at minimum.

• Once 60% of the vote in any given election is in, the site indicate which way the seat is leaning, then display when each race is called.

• It’ll also report how many seats have flipped, how close each party is to a majority, and where new majorities have been forged.

• To put the race into context, each election includes partisan district lean.

• Congressional races are broken down into tiers based on rankings by the Cook Political Report. I’ll continue to add additional races as well.

• I’ve included every state legislative race and indicated swing districts, which works way more smoothly than you’d expect.

Hopefully this resource makes it easy for you to follow the elections and process the news during what should be a chaotic night. I’ll continue to improve the sites as Election Day approaches, so if you take a look and have any suggestions, I’m eager to hear them.

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The new election sites are free to use, but were not free to make.

I’ve taken down the paywall, stopped normal billing, and made all Progress Report content — including new articles and the huge Election Hub site — free while I recover from open-heart surgery.

You’re invited support this work via donations to the newsletter’s GoFundMe, and every donation is very appreciated.

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