You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
4 “déjà vu” districts
Eight days, folks. As we count down to the election and Halloween, a few “eerie” Congressional districts have emerged, my colleague Nathaniel Rakich writes. Four districts that hosted competitive special elections within the last year and a half are also hosting competitive midterm races, and our forecast predicts those races to closely mirror those special elections. Those include races in Arizona, Georgia, Montana and Ohio. Downright spooky if you ask me. [FiveThirtyEight]
5 home games in LA
There was an extra special sports equinox in sunny Southern California yesterday, with five L.A.-area pro teams in different sports all hosting games on the same night. To recap the phenomenon: the Kings beat the New York Rangers at the Staples Center, the Rams beat the Green Bay Packers at the Coliseum, the Galaxy lost to the Houston Dynamo at the StubHub Center in Carson, the Dodgers lost to the Boston Red Sox at Dodger Stadium, and the Clippers defeated the Washington Wizards, also at the Staples Center. I’m sure traffic and everything was fine. [Los Angeles Times]
55 percent of the vote
Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right congressman who has “exalted the country’s military dictatorship,” was elected president of Brazil with 55 percent of the vote. He is further right than any other leader in the region, according to the Times. [The New York Times]
600-foot statue
At the end of the month, India is scheduled to unveil what is being billed as the world’s tallest statue, standing 600 feet high. The statue is of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, a Founding Father of India and leader of its struggle for independence. The statue cost a reported $430 million to build. Farmers in the area, who say they lack basic irrigation facilities, are unhappy with how the money was spent. [BBC]
13,000 registered voters
Dodge City — of Wild West legend — is now home to a more modern, political duel. The town is home to some 13,000 registered voters who have long had access to only one polling place. And that polling place was moved far from the town center and to “what amounts to an urban wilderness” in what happens to be the heart of the white part of town. Democrats see the move as an attempt to disenfranchise Latinos, who are a majority of the town’s population. The official responsible for the move cited the new site’s ample parking. [The Guardian]
$34 billion deal
In the third largest tech acquisition of all time — trailing only Dell/EMC and JDS Uniphase/SDL — IBM is buying, for $34 billion, the open-source software distributor Red Hat, known for its “flavor” of the operating system Linux. Big Blue and Red Hat — seems only appropriate for this the week before the midterms. [Recode]
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