You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
65,000 people
Taylor Swift’s recent Instagram post to her 112 million followers (!) endorsed two Tennessee Democrats and urged people to register to vote. It appears to have resonated. The website vote.org reported that indeed some 65,000 people between the ages of 18 and 29 had registered following the post. All the new registrations likely weren’t because of Swift, though: many states’ registration deadlines were this week. [NBC News]
80 percent chance
Republicans’ chances of holding on to the Senate have crept up to about 80 percent according to our Classic forecast. My colleague Nate Silver described the polling pattern as follows: In general, Democrats have been ailing in red states and stable or improving in blue states, and Democrats have had “particular problems” in North Dakota, where Sen. Heidi Heitkamp’s numbers have been slipping. [FiveThirtyEight]
63 percent approval
Yesterday, Nikki Haley announced she’s resigning as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. at the end of the year. According to a Quinnipiac poll of five of President Trump’s Cabinet members, Haley was the only one with majority approval among Republicans and Democrats. Overall, 63 percent of people approved and 17 percent disapproved of her performance as ambassador. [The Washington Post]
114 justices
Brett Kavanaugh heard his first Supreme Court arguments as a justice yesterday. He’s the 114th justice in American history. Of those, 111 have been white, 110 have been men and the past 12 justices, including the entirety of the current court, have attended Ivy League law schools. [The New York Times]
15 nominees
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, that bastion of cultural relevance, announced its 2019 nominees for induction yesterday. They are The Cure, Def Leppard, Devo, Janet Jackson, John Prine, Kraftwerk, LL Cool J, MC5, Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, Roxy Music, Rufus & Chaka Khan, Stevie Nicks, Todd Rundgren and The Zombies. Actually seems like the makings of a pretty decent playlist, to be honest. [NPR]
Love digits? Find even more in FiveThirtyEight’s new book of math and logic puzzles, “The Riddler.” It’s in stores now! I hope you dig it.
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