You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news.
Tonight is debate night, so be sure to check the site this evening for a FiveThirtyEight live blog. I’ll be on ABC News’s digital stream of the debate shortly after 8 p.m. eastern.
2nd highest of all time
“Fruit Ninja” is a popular mobile game, in fact the second-highest selling game on iOS ever. It will also be a movie produced by New Line, because too many people decided to see “The Angry Birds Movie” and we are sinners in the hands of an angry god. [The Hollywood Reporter]
2 points ahead
The first of three nationally televised presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump happens Monday night at Hofstra University. The race slightly favors Clinton by an average of two points in national polls, and she is a 58 percent favorite to win the presidency. You can watch the debate tonight on any television that is not already playing Monday Night Football. [FiveThirtyEight]
AB 1687
On Saturday California Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 1687, which would require an entertainment database site — the biggest and most well-known being IMDb — to remove an actor’s birthdate if it’s requested by a paid subscriber. The measure was pushed by the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA to combat age discrimination. [The Hollywood Reporter]
$22,000
It took almost five months for Ted Cruz to endorse Donald Trump, his party’s nominee for president, but only six weeks to cash in and rent out his vast email list to the nominee. Politico reports that Cruz was renting his email list to Trump well before the endorsement. A rate sheet obtained by Politico indicated that Cruz charges $22,000 to send one email to 280,000 donors and $51,000 to get in the inboxes of all 1.28 million of his supporters. [Politico]
$45,000
Truman Capote’s ashes sold for $45,000 at auction on Saturday. The original estimate of the likely selling price was a mere $4,000, which strikes me as rather low for the only remains of a beloved and highly regarded author. (Not that I’ve put all that much thought into the selling of the cremated bodies of literary figures.) But while we’re on the subject, how badly do you need to mess up your will to end up in this kind of situation? [The Associated Press]
$49.6 million
“Bundlers” are people who not only contribute to a campaign but also compel their friends and network to do so as well. It’s common for presidential campaigns to acknowledge and disclose these people, and according to a Center for Public Integrity study of the Clinton bundlers, the top group of fundraisers is responsible for at least $49.6 million of the $275 million her campaign committee raised as of June 30. [Center for Public Integrity]
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