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Significant Digits For Friday, March 29, 2019

You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.


More than 300 pages

The full report of special counsel Robert Mueller is more than 300 pages long, according to the Justice Department. However, all that has been made public is Attorney General William Barr’s summary, which is four pages long. In the context of government reports, Mueller’s isn’t an outlier — the Starr report ran 445 pages, the 9/11 commission report 567 pages, and a report on how the FBI handled an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server was 568 pages. [The New York Times]


More than 1,000 passengers

Wow Air, a budget carrier out of Iceland, ceased operations on Thursday, stranding travelers on multiple continents and affecting more than 1,000 passengers. I’ve heard of canceled flights, but never a canceled airline. “I’m disappointed not to honor our commitments,” the Wow CEO said — those commitments being, like, getting people back across the Atlantic Ocean. [CNN]


6,227 pedestrians

More than 6,000 pedestrians died in traffic accidents in 2018, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association, the highest number in three decades. Experts, according to NPR, attribute the rise to “drivers and pedestrians distracted by their phones” along with an increase in large vehicles. [NPR]


More than $1 trillion

Amy Klobuchar — Democratic candidate for president, senator from Minnesota, and reported eater of salad with comb — wants to “break the partisan logjam” and professes to be able to do so with a $1 trillion infrastructure plan to improve America’s roads and bridges, public schools, and broadband internet. She reportedly plans to make infrastructure, the betterment of which has bipartisan support, a centerpiece of her campaign. [The Wall Street Journal]


5-point window

Despite the seemingly constant clangor from the White House and Washington, D.C., President Trump’s approval ratings remain incredibly steady. Half of his approval polls have fallen with a band of 5 points, between 39 percent and 44 percent. Only President Barack Obama rivaled that narrow range, while every other president back to Harry Truman saw wider ranges, and in many cases much wider. “As Democrats and Republicans move farther apart politically,” my colleague Geoffrey Skelley writes, “the specifics of a president’s job performance may become secondary considerations for voters in forming an opinion of how he’s doing.” [FiveThirtyEight]


184 of the 270 votes

The governor of Delaware signed a law pledging that that state’s Electoral College votes will go to the winner of the national popular vote in the presidential election, regardless of who actually wins the state itself. Delaware is the 13th state to commit to such a pledge, and those states now represent 184 of the 270 Electoral College votes needed to elect a president. [Associated Press]


From ABC News:


It’s Morning, America: Friday, March 29, 2019


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Oliver Roeder was a senior writer for FiveThirtyEight. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied game theory and political competition.

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