Essays from the atlas
A tighter editorial shelf for Akashic’s flagship work — premium, sourced essays on the machinery, forecasts, and precedents beneath American elections.
The Regency
How 1920 — not 1968 — explains 2024: the one precedent for a presidency run, at its end, as a regency around a man the country was not allowed to see clearly.
The Map of Veto Power
A governor forecast is not a chamber forecast, not really. Governors do not gather in Washington and vote as a bloc. But governorships still add up to power: veto power, appointment power, redistricting leverage, election administration, emergency authority, and the daily machinery of state government. That is why we forecast them as a map.
The Long Road to 218
We do not think the House forecast should read like a leaderboard. The chamber is too large for that, and the majority is too small. The useful question is not which party has more colored territory on the map. It is how many fragile districts have to survive before the count reaches 218.
Fifty Is Not Enough
The Senate forecast has a trap built into it: a tie looks close, but it is not neutral. In this edition, 50 Democratic seats still leave Republicans organizing the chamber. So the Democratic target is not respectability, or parity, or a good map on paper. It is 51.
Beyond the City Line
Fifty-eight million votes are cast from outside every city and town in the American atlas. Combined, they are the largest electorate in the country — and the fastest-moving.
The Ballot They Asked For
Colorado's unaffiliated majority is handed both primary ballots and asked to return one. Across 2022, 2024, and 2026 they returned the Democratic one more each time — and by the most in four Republican-held seats a partisan gerrymander would have drawn away, and an independent commission would not.
The Machine Vote
Tammany Hall, a Philadelphia dam-break, and what 7,300 communities say about the coalition Donald Trump actually built.