How political campaigns use your data

Understand the US electorate demographics

Ever wonder how much of each group make up the American voting bloc? Find raw data from the '16 and '18 elections broken out by a variety of factors (click on "validated voters database" link).

Explore a comprehensive archive of US presidential election data

This University of California, Santa Barbara archive compiles presidential election data from 1789 to the present, including popular vote totals, turnout figures, and contextual resources that explain how the electoral process and political landscape have evolved.

Around 87 million users were impacted by Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal

Cambridge Analytica, a consulting firm with Russian and conservative ties, harvested data from Facebook users through a research tool that tracked interests across social connections on Facebook. Those profiles were used for targeted ad campaigns supporting Donald Trump in 2016 and pro-Brexit ads. A whistleblower originally said the private data of more than 50 million Facebook users was compromised, but a Facebook officer later estimated the number was around 87 million. Facebook settled the class-action lawsuit over the privacy breach for $725M in 2022.

Election 101 podcast

What’s actually at stake when someone casts their vote in a US election? CNN’s “Election 101” podcast series provides ten episodes summarizing some of the basics of democratic elections. The ins and outs of voting are highlighted in 15-minute episodes on voter registration and voting by mail. Additional segments highlight how the electoral system works, how ballots are counted, the Electoral College, why it takes so long to get election results, and more.

The rise of the campaign speech

What compels an audience shifts over time, meaning yesterday's popular speeches might not go over the same way if delivered today. However, impactful campaign speeches across time share some qualities, including taking the audience seriously, inviting listeners to engage with or respond to presented materials, and using everyday, informal language. Additionally, US political candidates typically promote themselves in their speeches, an approach initially considered vulgar in Australia and Britain.

The firms running America's voting systems

Three companies make up over 90% of the US market share around voting systems, and like any company, they're priorities aren't always aligned with the public's. Dive into the industry of voting machines in this investigation piece from the Guardian.

Hear how gerrymandering is like 'Moneyball applied to politics'

In a 2016 interview, journalist David Daley explained how Republicans used data-driven targeting after the 2010 census to lock in durable advantages, comparing modern gerrymandering strategies to the analytics revolution in baseball.

Voting by mail in the US

Voting by mail, also known as “absentee” voting, exists in every US state in various forms. Use Reuters’ graphic to understand voting by mail in the US. The practice of voting by mail dates back to the US Civil War when lawmakers wanted to...

Travel in time to how people felt about major US events

Pollsters track more than just politics: From civil rights to war declarations, go back and see how people felt about major events in the US with this timeline.

Explore data on every US county with this interactive

The Community Explorer is an interactive tool that brings the power of big data and machine learning to the equity-related policy discussion. Search by economic profile and county and see the country from a different lens.

A prediction market was more accurate than most polls about the 2024 US presidential election

The idea that the median estimate of a group can be more accurate than individual expert estimates is called the "wisdom of the crowd," and dates back to the early 1900s. This theory can help explain the perceived value of prediction markets when it comes to polling and more.

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission allowed unlimited independent spending in US elections

The 2010 Supreme Court ruling allowed corporations and other outside groups to spend unlimited money on elections independently of candidates—while leaving direct contribution limits intact—expanding the role of wealthy donors and outside influence in American political campaigns.

Visualize government spending with USAFacts

This resource turns complex federal budget data into clear charts and summaries, letting users explore how much the government spends; where the money goes; and how revenue, deficits, and debt change over time.

Ads follow you around the internet through cookies

A technology called “cookies” enables advertisers to essentially team up and follow your behavior around on the internet. This video explains why it seems like ads seem to follow you as you go from website to website—as well as data privacy advocates’ war against cookies.

Listen to a deepfake robocall of President Joe Biden

Bad actors are not solely using deepfake technology to manipulate images. They can also manipulate audio for political purposes. In this example, eligible voters are asked to skip the 2024 New Hampshire Democratic primary.

In 1974, Los Angeles’s Community Analysis Bureau built a smart city

Los Angeles utilized aerial imaging and cluster analysis to gather and interpret civic data, leveraging surveillance technologies developed by the Department of Defense during the height of the Cold War. Instead of being used for military purposes, data insights helped direct social services to high-poverty neighborhoods.

Google Search trends reveal truths about society that traditional surveys miss

Studies of human behavior show that survey respondents may lie to present themselves more favorably. By studying anonymous search data, researchers have uncovered hidden racism, mental health struggles, and interest in taboo or stigmatized topics.

Americans think being informed is a priority for voting, but don't prioritize reading the news

Many Americans report feeling "news fatigue," finding much of the news they encounter irrelevant. Still, being informed is recognized as a major civic duty. Many Americans have stopped seeking out the news or are far more selective about where they receive it, and an increasing sense that its up to individuals to confirm the facts they're being told.

See the news with AI-generated data visualizations

Realtime uses generative AI to create immediate data visualizations of news items on its regularly-updated feed, pulling from public data feeds. Peruse stories around sports, economics, politics, and more with the helpful aid of charts and graphs. See the shape of the news with this clever AI tool here.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

The IRS already has much of the data it asks Americans to report when filing their taxes

Americans spend more than 7.9 billion hours per year doing their taxes: It's notoriously time-consuming, requiring forms, deductions, and often third-party help. But here's the twist: The IRS already has much of the data it asks you to report. Americans still have to do the work themselves partly due to big tax prep companies that lobby to keep the status quo.

Breast, prostate, and lung cancer are the most common forms of the disease

Close to 1.8 million cases of cancer are diagnosed each year in the US, with more than 600,000 deaths (about 0.2% of the total population). This visualization tool offers a searchable database of aggregate statistics on common cancers by gender, race, state, and other demographic information.

There are ETFs that track lawmakers' stock purchases

If you can’t get enough politics in your life, why not invest like a politician? Because members of Congress are required to disclose their stock purchases, you can do just that, and the NANC and KRUZ ETFs make it even easier. NANC, referencing Nancy Pelosi, holds a basket of stocks that Democratic politicians have purchased. KRUZ, referencing Ted Cruz, holds a basket of Republican-held stocks.

Colorado legislates neural and biological data generated by the nervous system

The law expands personal privacy protections to include data from brain activity, marking the first legal step of its kind in the US. It targets companies involved in consumer neurotechnologies, which were previously not required to restrict user data access.

View a map of US data center infrastructure in 2025

Thousands of data centers across the country have already been built, with more under construction or planned. Facilities are connected via transmission and fiber optic lines, with the latter spanning an estimated length of 160 million miles.

BirdCast provides real-time data and forecasts of US nocturnal bird migration

The dashboard provides a live feed from March 1 to June 15 and August 1 to November 15 that includes radar-based data on the number of birds, directions, speeds, and altitudes, offering insights into migration patterns, species, and environmental impacts.

Calculate how much of your tax dollars go to each federal program based on your income, filing status, and number of children

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

Roughly 43 million US borrowers owe roughly $1.7T in student debt, the second-largest source of consumer debt behind mortgages.

44% of Americans say they pray at least once a day—discover how your state's religiosity stacks up against the rest of the country.

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

This site reaches millions of visitors who are tired of AI chatbots and seeking human connection. Pretend to be an AI chatbot and ask questions, provide answers, and draw for people in real time.

Visualize how CRISPR-Cas9—a type of immune system used by single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses—targets and makes precise changes to a gene's DNA.

Learn how to read a prospectus, the juicy document that any company must file with the SEC before going public.

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

See 33 images that became central to huge scandals, including a young Charles and Camilla, Michael Jackson's baby on a hotel balcony, and Hugh Grant's mugshot.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

An Ebola vaccine was developed during the 2018 west African Ebola outbreak, but the 2026 Ebola outbreak is with a different species of the virus, not the one that the vaccine is approved to treat.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.