Telling the story of a historic election with data
By Jim Lane and Manav Tanneeru, CNN
The 2020 U.S. general election was unlike any that America had seen before. In the midst of a global pandemic Americans cast over 152 million votes to elect a new president, as well as federal, state and local officials across the country.
In talking to CNN users throughout the year, we consistently heard that they had many questions about how to navigate the election. As we thought about how to inform and empower our visitors, we asked ourselves some questions:
- How could we help users in the U.S. exercise their right to vote? What are the details and dates they needed to be aware of when it would be challenging to head to the polls as they normally would on Election Day? What were their options if they were concerned about voting in person because of the pandemic?
- How could we help users follow who was winning races across the United States, when what we traditionally understood as “Election Day” could become “Election Week” or even “Election Month?”
- How could we help users understand what the facts were amid lies and disinformation, and hold elected officials and candidates accountable?
- How could we help users learn about the United States electoral process and the complex workings of our government?
A cross-functional team — composed of product, editorial, design and technology leads — held a series of discussions, brainstorming activities and design exercises to think through how best to address those questions and user needs. Those discussions led to features and products focused on two pillars: explanatory content and tools, and data-driven storytelling.
A set of core principles informed the work across disciplines:
- Integrate our content and our products in seamless, organic ways.
- Connect our users with CNN’s expertise.
- Use feedback loops with our users to respond to pain points and needs as they evolved.
Explanatory content and tools
Explaining how elections work
In conversation after conversation, survey after survey, our users told us that they wanted to better understand the U.S. electoral process. We asked them what specific questions they had and then consulted experts for answers.
We published a series of features to address questions about polling, the Electoral College, and about why the U.S. always holds elections on a Tuesday. We also collaborated with our partners at CNN en Español to make these features available in Spanish.
Finally, to make it easier to get started we created an “Elections 101” page that aggregates these articles, videos, podcasts, and tools.
Empowering voters
Going into the 2020 election the most important service we could provide was to help U.S. users understand when and how they can safely vote, what their rights were, and what information about voting was fact or fiction.
We pursued this goal through a combination of news coverage, explanatory content, podcasts, and tools like the CNN Voter Guide. Using multiple sources, this guide helped U.S. voters participate by looking up data for their state. It included details like:
- How to register to vote
- Whether their state had early voting
- Voter ID requirements
- Details on mail-in voting
- Links to state resources
In addition, this guide to mail-in voting — a collaboration between the CNN Visuals team and CNN’s Political Unit, a team of subject matter experts — provided a national overview of key dates and details.
Fact-checking officials and candidates
The 2020 U.S. electoral process presented an immense challenge to the American people, who had been flooded with exaggerations, misinformation, and, at times, outright lies by elected officials and candidates. The struggle to understand what is fact, and what is not, played out on both the national and local stage.
At CNN, we created Facts First, a database of fact-checks to help users better understand and make their own decisions about statements by their elected officials and candidates. Facts First played an important role in the U.S. presidential and vice-presidential debates leading up to the general election, providing evaluations of statements by candidates in real-time.
Telling stories with data
Tracking the primary campaign
The 2020 election began more than a year ago, with more than two dozen Democratic Party candidates contemplating a run. As the Democratic Primary contests wound through the states and territories, we harnessed data like polling, primary election results and the race for party delegates to track the campaign.
The pivot to the General Election
In late summer, as the candidates — President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden — cemented their primary victories and became the party nominees, we made a pivot toward the General Election. Data again helped us tell the story of a (mostly virtual) campaign:
Polling data from both CNN and select other organizations helped users follow the dynamics of the race on state and national levels. We also tracked the money race — an important indicator of a campaign’s health — for both Biden and Trump.
CNN’s Road to 270 electoral map included ratings for each state based on its voting history, polling, demographics and other data. A “Build Your Own” feature provided CNN visitors a way to game out the electoral strategy for each candidate. As Election Day approached, the map showed Biden’s advantage in the electoral math:
Election Night
Due to the pandemic and unprecedented early in-person and mail-in voting, the 2020 general election promised to be unlike any other in recent memory. There was doubt going into Election Night that winners of the various contests would be known on November 3, as states could take days or weeks to finish counting the vote. In the weeks leading up to election night, legal challenges had already begun and the Supreme Court began to rule on voter rights cases.
Races played out at the national, state, and local levels. To help CNN users understand how races were decided we created interactive presidential, Senate, House, and governor maps. Users could zoom in and out of these maps to get additional details about particular races. These experiences were optimized for both desktop and mobile devices, so CNN users could follow the election at home or on the go. They were also modularized so election-related experiences could be presented across CNN U.S. and international websites.
My Election
To provide CNN users a more personal election experience we created “My Election.” This feature allowed users to pre-select U.S. presidential, senate, house, and governor races that were important to them, and see live updates to those races from anywhere in CNN’s online Election Center. If users weren’t sure which races to follow, we provided “collections” of suggestions from a number of CNN experts such as Wolf Blitzer, Jake Tapper John King, Dana Bash, and Abby Phillip. These collections included their picks for the most important races they were following themselves on election night.
What’s next?
We will build on the features and capabilities created for the coverage of the 2020 cycle to continue providing value to our users, whether it’s more ways to customize content, explore data or find what’s relevant amid the noise.
If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that the unexpected should be expected. Our commitment to CNN users is that we will employ every resource at our disposal to provide context and explanation, empower citizens with tools and resources, and hold elected officials and candidates accountable.
