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Significant Digits For Thursday, Aug. 23, 2018

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


2 indicted congressmen

On top of the plea deal and conviction of President Trump’s former lawyer and campaign chairman, respectively, the first two U.S. House members to publicly endorse Trump’s candidacy have been indicted. Rep. Chris Collins, a Republican from New York, was arrested by the FBI earlier this month and accused of insider trading, and Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California, was indicted by a grand jury Tuesday on charges of improperly using campaign funds. [Huffington Post]


155 mph winds

A hurricane named Lane is threatening Hawaii. The storm is currently a Category 4, blowing with 155 mph winds. It is forecast to come close and possibly graze or even hit the state over today and Friday. Only two hurricanes have made landfall in Hawaii in the past 60 years. [Vox]


322 of 435 House races

Ticktock goes the midterm countdown clock, and FiveThirtyEight is back with its Election Updates series. In the latest edition, my colleague Nathaniel Rakich compares our House forecast with some experts’ ratings. In 322 of the 435 House races, our Classic forecast agrees with the Cook Political Report, Inside Elections and Sabato’s Crystal Ball. But the FiveThirtyEight forecast is a little bit more bullish on Democrats’ chances than the other major handicappers. [FiveThirtyEight]


More than 3 hours each day

According to a study conducted by Adobe of 1,000 American white-collar workers, people report spending more than three hours checking work email each day. Please be sure to email in if you have any thoughts about this digit! [Fortune]


933 planned rallies

Democrats in Congress are prepping an emergency plan in case special counsel Robert Mueller is fired. The priority is preserving Mueller’s documents and team, along with possibly passing legislation retroactively protecting his investigation. And Democratic groups would initiate a flurry of rallies across the country. The liberal group MoveOn.org is planning 933 of these, and more than 350,000 people have RSVP’d online. [NBC News]


652 fake accounts, pages and groups

Facebook (yeah, yeah, I know) identified and removed 652 fake accounts, pages and groups that were part of a misinformation campaign, largely targeting Americans. The campaign activity came from Russia and Iran, according to the company. This is a dramatic increase from the 32 fake accounts and pages that the company removed last month. [The New York Times]


If you see a significant digit in the wild, please send it to @ollie.

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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