2019 in Numbers

2019 was a big year for Cicero. We followed hundreds of elections, engaged with new customers, added new data, increased the functionality of our tools, and wrote a lot of blogs. We are gearing up for an even bigger year in election-dense 2020. But before we start preparing for November, we wanted to take a minute to reflect on our wins from 2019. Here’s a summary of our year, in numbers.

501 elections

From city councils to national parliaments, we tracked 206 general elections around the world. We also tracked deaths/resignations/vacancies in 2019 and the subsequent 295 special elections and appointments that occurred. And as you can see in this captivating graphic created by our colleague Daniel, we did some analysis on election results. Our data shows that 80% of officials elected in 2019 (in the areas we cover) were returning incumbents.

14 redistricted areas

2021 will be an important year for redistricting in the US, following the decennial census this year. However, many US states and localities redistricted in 2019 due to court cases and/or shifting demographics. Other countries have different redistricting cycles, and some of them redistricted on their normal schedule in 2019. Altogether, we added new districts for 14 different provinces, states, and cities where there was redistricting in 2019. The following areas held elections in new, redistricted districts:

• The Australia House of Representatives had an election on May 18th, with redistricted districts in 5 territories (Victoria, Queensland, Northern Territory, Tasmania, Australian Capital Territory)
• The Canadian House of Commons held an election on October 21st, with redistricted districts in 3 Canadian provinces (Manitoba, Alberta, and Prince Edward Island)
• The Virginia House of Delegates had to redraw its map due to a court case that went all the way to the supreme court, calling the old map racially gerrymandered. The new districts went into effect in advance of the November 5th general election.
• We covered elections in 5 cities in the US that redistricted in 2019 due to court cases, parish deconsolidation, or other reasons (Peoria, AZ, Aurora, CO, Arvada, CO, Lafayette, LA, and Mesquite, TX).

55 cities and counties added

We increased our local data coverage again this year to include 55 new cities and counties. We went through a major expansion to cover the largest cities in Canada, and we also added new cities and counties in the US, including Ramsey County, MN, Albany, NY, Fairfax County, VA, and Loudoun County, VA. See here for our current data coverage.

3 major improvements

We continued to make improvements to Cicero, in order to ensure that it is the best tool out there for our users. A few features were added in 2019 that make it even easier to use:

• We created the officials_by_region endpoint to enable organizations to access entire legislative assemblies’ contact information in a really simple way.
• We added OCD-ID’s to District Match, so folks can standardize their results.
• We also added the ability to run custom District Match projects, where users can select specific fields they would like returned.

6 events

From activist conferences to nonprofit training sessions and state legislator gatherings, the Cicero Team did our best to learn about and share new trends in the political geography and advocacy space. You might have seen us at Creating Change, Nonprofit Learning Lab, Unrig Summit, Personal Democracy Forum, Netroots Nation, or NCSL.

19 blogs in 2019

We wrote a lot of blogs in 2019. Like, the most blogs we’ve ever written in one year — 19! Our blogs typically cover elections, showcase our data, highlight new features, and share insights about contacting elected officials. This year we loved getting to dive into Cicero’s data and discover some interesting trends, like Luke’s analysis of how the urban/rural divide among politicians displays itself in social media usage. We also highlighted customer use cases for the first time in our blog, like how Washington Environmental Council is using District Match. Our data team spends a lot of time scouring elected official social media pages, to ensure that our coverage is accurate and exhaustive. Some of our favorite blogs this year pulled from our familiarity with elected officials’ social media accounts to highlight the best pets and the potential Harry Potter witches and wizards.

We also started a newsletter, a monthly(ish) production that showcases some of these blogs, shares product updates, and helps folks keep up to date on upcoming elections. If you’re interested, sign up here.

We do all of this in service of you. We were proud to help new and returning users access this data to make changes in their communities in 2019, and we look forward to doing even more of it in 2020. Thanks for being a part of it!