{
 "title": "Where every number comes from",
 "description": "Each chart, its data, what we did to it and where it can mislead. Every dataset is stored with a content hash, its receipt, so any figure can be recomputed from the same rows.",
 "url": "https://politic.design/midterms-2026/methodology/",
 "published": "2026-11-05",
 "updated": "2026-11-06",
 "publisher": {
  "name": "politic.design",
  "url": "https://politic.design",
  "made_by": {
   "name": "Brantopic",
   "url": "https://brantopic.com/"
  }
 },
 "license": {
  "name": "Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)",
  "id": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
 },
 "credit": "politic.design",
 "suggested_credit": "Source: politic.design",
 "terms": "Free to reuse, adapt and republish, including commercially, by any outlet or person, as long as you credit politic.design as the source (with a link to the page where you can). Figures that politic.design took from third parties (exit polls, election results, Wikipedia, GDELT and others named on each dataset) stay under those sources' own terms, so credit them as well.",
 "independence": "politic.design has no affiliation with any political party, candidate or campaign, in the US or anywhere else.",
 "status": "Preliminary: results are counted before certification (states certify in December 2026).",
 "notes": {},
 "receipts": [],
 "downloads": {
  "html": "https://politic.design/midterms-2026/methodology/",
  "markdown": "https://politic.design/midterms-2026/methodology/index.md",
  "json": "https://politic.design/midterms-2026/methodology/data.json",
  "pdf": "https://politic.design/midterms-2026/methodology/methodology.pdf"
 },
 "datasets": [
  {
   "name": "visual_grammar",
   "description": "The ten metaphors used across the gazette.",
   "source": "politic.design",
   "records": [
    {
     "name": "Weight transfer",
     "idea": "Groups as weights on the margin ruler; the national margin is where the ruler balances. Under braking a car's load shifts and its balance moves; so does a country's.",
     "form": "2.5D",
     "used_in": "Story 1"
    },
    {
     "name": "The ballot",
     "idea": "The swing counted as filled bubbles on a ballot paper, each contest coloured by the groups that filled it. Separates loud swings from big ones.",
     "form": "2D",
     "used_in": "Story 1"
    },
    {
     "name": "The kerb",
     "idea": "The painted strip at the edge of the track: groups within six points of even, where the next race is won or lost.",
     "form": "2D",
     "used_in": "Story 2"
    },
    {
     "name": "The receipt",
     "idea": "An itemised bill of grievances with a total at the bottom. Also the house style: a source under every number.",
     "form": "2D",
     "used_in": "Story 2"
    },
    {
     "name": "Cover story",
     "idea": "Each issue as a magazine cover, its news-coverage line printed full-bleed behind the headline, with Brantopic's flagged days as hot spots.",
     "form": "2D",
     "used_in": "Story 2"
    },
    {
     "name": "The blue wave",
     "idea": "Districts as a city of towers at their Trump margin; the national swing as a sea that rises through the streets; redrawn maps as levees.",
     "form": "3D",
     "used_in": "Story 3"
    },
    {
     "name": "Tectonic relief",
     "idea": "County swing extruded as terrain. South Texas rises as a new range; the fault lines show where it moved and back.",
     "form": "3D",
     "used_in": "Story 4"
    },
    {
     "name": "Jet stream",
     "idea": "One arrow per county, length and angle set by the swing, so the map reads like a weather front moving across the Sun Belt.",
     "form": "2D map",
     "used_in": "Story 4"
    },
    {
     "name": "The convention",
     "idea": "The electorate as a 990-seat hall: delegations for how people voted last time, flags for how they voted this time, voices from the floor.",
     "form": "3D",
     "used_in": "Story 5"
    },
    {
     "name": "Pendulum",
     "idea": "Every midterm since 1946 as one swing of the president's party. 2026 swings furthest since 1974. Evergreen explainer.",
     "form": "2.5D",
     "used_in": "Across the gazette"
    }
   ]
  }
 ]
}