How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Needle
The New York Times’ reviled interactive is back for 2020 — sort of
Four years ago, a New York Times election graphic earned a place in media infamy. For much of the night, “the needle” — a quivering indicator of which candidate is more likely to win, updated in real time as data pours in — showed Hillary Clinton as the favorite. And then, suddenly, it didn’t.
As the needle swung in Trump’s direction around 9 p.m., it became much more than a data visualization. For Clinton voters, it became an encapsulation of everything that was going terribly, unfathomably wrong: The fate of the country and democracy distilled to a lone meter that was suddenly pointing to “red alert.” Pundits and media theorists would later dissect its journalistic merits and failings, but its memory lives on most vividly as a jittery icon of liberal trauma.
That hasn’t stopped the Times from trotting the needle back out for subsequent elections, beginning with the 2017 special election for a Senate seat in Alabama, between Democrat Doug Jones and disgraced Republican Roy Moore. The needle has since had its share of triumphs —…
