Town Hall Index is a clear, comprehensive, raw-data view of the US government, economy, and cultural moment. Be confident that you're seeing the full picture, and compare media narratives with public interest and opinion using objective data.
For a few months, my starting point for news consumption has been a dashboard I made for myself. It's made my thinking about US public life more serious and sane, so today I'm sharing it with everyone:
http://TownHallIndex.com
Here's how it works and the benefits I've observed:
THI aggregates objective data sources about the US government, economy, and cultural moment.
Gov data sources include:
- polling avgs (elections, approvals, opinions)
- betting odds
- # of mentions on TV news
- Google Trends
- fundraising
- most faved tweets
To keep the full economic system in view:
- $ value of all sectors/industries
- employment situation
- aggregate household cashflow
- consumer goods prices
- mining, energy, transportation metrics
- employment and production in manufacturing
- retail employment and sales by type
For the current cultural moment:
- twitter trends
- top Google searches
- most viewed Wikipedia pages
- trending phrases on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, CNBC, and BBC
- top headlines from major news publishers
- Billboard Top 100 music
- box office and Rotten Tomatoes
- Amazon best selling books
- most shared academic articles
Benefits I've experienced:
- confidence I'm seeing the full picture
- unmediated by my Twitter bubble or media orgs
- compare media orgs' narratives with each other and what ppl are acutally talking/searching/reading about
- check my intuitions against data
This content can be found on TownHallIndex.com, through the newsletter (signup on the webiste), or at https://www.Twitter.com/Election...
SO many neat and relevant metrics to dive in to, I got lost in exploring all the different leaderboards and loved it. The Economic System page is easily understood yet still provides so much information. I really like seeing the current polling rates of Democratic candidates compared to their betting odds, that's quite an interesting comparison to track in real time.
Love this. The site condenses metrics from tons of sources, it's great to have a high-level overview in a single place.
Also have enjoyed the ElectionsIndex bot on Twitter, which posts updates and handy scorecards as new data comes in from the web: https://twitter.com/ElectionsIndex
Password Monkey
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