-
5 Weeks to Go! Coverage Roadmap for Election Reporters
A journalist roadmap for where to focus your election reporting in October.
-
Get 1:1 help making your election plans and finding Election Hub resources
Not sure where to start? Join Ariel Zirulnick’s office hours. She can help you think through your election plan and navigate the resources available here in the Knight Election Hub.
-
OpenNews Communities of Practice Calls
This rotating call touches on different aspects of election reporting, like community and audience engagement, voter guides and products, or election data and visualizations, with a focus on discussion, ideation and exploration of both big-picture questions and practical solutions to common problems.
-
Votebeat Beat Backgrounders
Everything you need to know to cover voting in 2024, in 30 minute doses. These courses will familiarize reporters with the basics, and provide additional materials to help them dive deeper into individual topics.
-
Media Guide on Covering Elections and Voting
This comprehensive guide will help you understand variability in election laws and practices, and learn how to better navigate misinformation, legal changes, and the logistical aspects of election coverage.
-
Elections Campaign Toolkit
Access customizable fundraising newsletters, social media copy, toppers, graphics, and more — making it easy for you and your audience to support your election coverage.
-
Election SOS weekly newsletter
Stay up-to-date throughout the 2024 election cycle with the latest information from Election SOS to bolster your coverage.
Knight Election Hub
The Knight Election Hub is a collection of curated products and services that will help you cover the election better than you thought possible. And in cases where a resource costs money, Knight Foundation is picking up the check.
Interested in accessing limited or premium resources? Log in using your Muckrock or DocumentCloud account or create one if you don’t have one. Read more about the hub, including eligibility requirements.
Do you know about an election-related resource that should be listed in the Knight Election Hub? Let us know!
- Start here
- Most popular
- What's new
- Create voter guides
- Plan election coverage
- Background candidates
- Get data
- Publish election results
- Get voter insights
- Get training
- Cover misinformation
- Talk to experts
- Cover election administration
- Protect yourself
- Cover voting rights/legal issues
- Cover political violence
Most popular
5 resources
-
Swing State Data Training
Get hands-on experience with powerful tools to research donors, lobbyists, dark money, and more.
-
Sunlight Search Training and Research
Learn how to deeply profile candidates for public office.
-
Elections Campaign Toolkit
Access customizable fundraising newsletters, social media copy, toppers, graphics, and more — making it easy for you and your audience to support your election coverage.
-
Govpack
Use this Wordpress plugin to create dynamic candidate profiles for voter guides and other civic journalism.
-
Nota AI tools for newsrooms
Use this suite of AI tools to enhance different aspects of your newsroom's work, from summarizing lengthy articles, to streamlining newsletter and social-media creation, to helping you create visual and video coverage of election news.
-
Voter Explorer Pa.
Voter Explorer Pa., provided by The Philadelphia Inquirer, is a collection of story guides and a regularly updated database of Pennsylvania registered voters. Journalists can select voter data, filtering by age, gender, party, address, voter history, or other fields, then download the data for further analysis. Voter Explorer Pa. will help reporters quickly find local contacts for election stories; the how-to guides walk reporters through different kinds of stories that can be informed by the data.
-
Votebeat Expert Desk
Get quick-turnaround answers from election experts — former officials, tech experts, election law scholars — in a Slack channel starting October 14, moderated by Votebeat editorial director Jessica Huseman.
-
PEN America Digital Safety & Online Abuse Prevention Workshops
Learn how to protect yourself, your colleagues, and your employees from online abuse while covering election-related stories with one of these four workshops.
-
Legitimate's AI Tool Suite (in English and Spanish)
Use this suite of AI tools for everything from background research to optimization and reader engagement. These tools (available in both English and Spanish) streamline the writing process, enhancing a newsroom's ability to deliver accurate, engaging content around the election for readers.
-
Sunlight Search research desk
Enlist the pros to help your newsroom conduct deep background research on political candidates. Sunlight Search will pull documents, analyze data, and produce a timeline and source list on up to three candidates that will help your reporters put together impactful stories before the election.
-
Trusting News webinar series: 5 strategies for useful, trusted election coverage
Join any of these October webinars to learn tangible strategies for topics from creating coverage that reaches beyond political junkies to covering hot button issues in a way that feels credible across the complicated spectrum of viewpoints.
-
Information Futures Lab Election Crisis Workshop
Join an online, immersive training event that places journalists and community leaders at the center of a fast-moving, breaking election story, challenging them to make strategic reporting decisions in real time.
-
Big Local News election data tools
Big Local News has data on everything from first-time voters to voting machines, and offers support and training to newsrooms to use data for journalism.
Create voter guides
From creating the guide to marketing it, here are some key resources. Click the category to view the full list of resources.
10 resources
-
Ballotpedia: Candidate and ballot measure data
Ballotpedia will provide access to structured data about elections, candidates, and ballot measures in the state(s) your newsroom covers.
-
ElectUp election guides
ElectUp is a platform for creating election guides that automatically gathers, organizes, and presents candidate comparisons. Because it was developed in local newsrooms, it fits smoothly into editorial workflows and has been refined to resonate with audience needs. NOTE: Space is limited, priority deadline is early September. Sign up now!
-
Guide to Voter Guides
News Revenue Hub's downloadable guide walks newsrooms through the planning and audience research necessary to create a strong voter guide that's optimized to reach as many people as possible.
-
Govpack
Use this Wordpress plugin to create dynamic candidate profiles for voter guides and other civic journalism.
-
Guides.vote nonpartisan voter guides
Get nonpartisan voter guides, created by veteran journalists and drawing on multiple sources, in both English and Spanish for 70 key elections nationwide, from the presidential race on down.
-
Center for Tech and Civic Life: Ballot Information Project
This nationwide dataset sourced from election officials, available through CTCL's API as well as Google's Civic Information API, includes federal, state and local candidates, as well as their party affiliation, the office they're seeking, contact information, websites and social media handles.
-
Voter Guide Training
This five-day email course walks journalists through how to build a voter guide, including user experience and designing an accountability roadmap.
-
League of Women Voters: Vote 411
This site provides a way for voters in all 50 states to register to vote or check their registration. Vote 411 also has sample ballots and sometimes candidate questionnaires for state and local races.
-
Election SOS: Make Your Voter Guide ICONIC
This guide from Election SOS makes the case for incorporating easy-to-understand icons in voter guides, and includes best practices and resources for doing so.
-
The Journalist's Resource: How to create a judicial voter guide
People want more information about the judges on their ballot, and this guide produced by the Journalist's Resource and America Amplified lays out eight steps newsrooms can take to create local and state judicial election guides for their audience.
Plan election coverage
How will your newsroom cover the lead-up to November 5, the day itself, and the post-election period? Here are some tools that can help your planning.
5 resources
-
MuckRock expert consulting on FOIA or document-display projects
Get custom training and coaching from MuckRock on an intensive public records project or a strategy for large-scale document display. Potential projects could involve many aspects of election coverage: voting machine security, gauging impacts of disinformation, cybersecurity intrusions and responses, threats and violence in the run up to voting day.
-
Election SOS Key Dates & Trainings Calendar
This Google Calendar maintained by Election SOS provides key dates in the election cycle alongside free training for journalists on a variety of topics. Click the link to subscribe.
-
Votebeat Expert Desk
Get quick-turnaround answers from election experts — former officials, tech experts, election law scholars — in a Slack channel starting October 14, moderated by Votebeat editorial director Jessica Huseman.
-
Election SOS weekly newsletter
Stay up-to-date throughout the 2024 election cycle with the latest information from Election SOS to bolster your coverage.
-
Trusting News webinar series: 5 strategies for useful, trusted election coverage
Join any of these October webinars to learn tangible strategies for topics from creating coverage that reaches beyond political junkies to covering hot button issues in a way that feels credible across the complicated spectrum of viewpoints.
Background candidates
Who's running for elected office in your community? These trainings and tools will help you create deep profiles of candidates for your audience.
5 resources
-
Junkipedia: Cross-platform social media monitoring
Junkipedia helps reporters quickly search and investigate what politicians are saying online, across a range of mainstream and fringe social media sites.
-
Sunlight Search Training and Research
Learn how to deeply profile candidates for public office.
-
VisualPing Website Monitoring and Change Detection
Use this free tool to track updates on government election websites, monitor candidate websites and news, and keep an eye on specific topics of interest without manually checking each page repeatedly.
-
MuckRock expert consulting on FOIA or document-display projects
Get custom training and coaching from MuckRock on an intensive public records project or a strategy for large-scale document display. Potential projects could involve many aspects of election coverage: voting machine security, gauging impacts of disinformation, cybersecurity intrusions and responses, threats and violence in the run up to voting day.
-
Sunlight Search research desk
Enlist the pros to help your newsroom conduct deep background research on political candidates. Sunlight Search will pull documents, analyze data, and produce a timeline and source list on up to three candidates that will help your reporters put together impactful stories before the election.
Get data
Access these treasure troves of data for everything from candidates information, financing, voting patterns and election machinery. Click the category to view the full list of resources.
11 resources
-
Swing State Data Training
Get hands-on experience with powerful tools to research donors, lobbyists, dark money, and more.
-
Google: Civic Information API
Google's Civic Information API pulls in data from a number of partners to provide election information for voters.
-
Voter Explorer Pa.
Voter Explorer Pa., provided by The Philadelphia Inquirer, is a collection of story guides and a regularly updated database of Pennsylvania registered voters. Journalists can select voter data, filtering by age, gender, party, address, voter history, or other fields, then download the data for further analysis. Voter Explorer Pa. will help reporters quickly find local contacts for election stories; the how-to guides walk reporters through different kinds of stories that can be informed by the data.
-
The University of Florida's Election Lab: Voter Turnout Data
The lab's massive database on voter turnout goes from 1789 to the present, and lets users examine voter turnout demographics, as well as for specific selected recent elections.
-
Verified Voting: The Verifier
Dig in to individual county data to see the technology officials are using to count ballots. Journalists can then read more about the technology (including how it works, where else it's used and how accessible it is) and see the individual manufacturer.
-
The University of Florida's Election Lab: Precinct Data
The lab's Voting and Election Science Team produces interactive maps based on individual precinct-level data for recent U.S. elections.
-
Center for Tech and Civic Life: Ballot Information Project
This nationwide dataset sourced from election officials, available through CTCL's API as well as Google's Civic Information API, includes federal, state and local candidates, as well as their party affiliation, the office they're seeking, contact information, websites and social media handles.
-
MIT's Election Data and Sciences Lab: Data
This collection of 27 datasets has county and precinct-level data for U.S. House, Senate and Presidential elections from 1976-2022.
-
Redistricting Data Hub
This data repository funded by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Fair Representation in Redistricting Initiative has more than 12,000 datasets from all 50 states to aid users in understanding and participating in the redistricting process.
-
Ballotpedia: Candidate and ballot measure data
Ballotpedia will provide access to structured data about elections, candidates, and ballot measures in the state(s) your newsroom covers.
-
Big Local News election data tools
Big Local News has data on everything from first-time voters to voting machines, and offers support and training to newsrooms to use data for journalism.
Publish election results
These resources make it easy to bring results to your audience in real-time.
3 resources
-
Free AP Election Data for INN members
With support from the Google News Initiative, The Associated Press is giving INN members access to U.S. election results as part of the organizations’ shared commitment to providing facts around the democratic process.
-
Decision Desk HQ Live Election Results
Decision Desk HQ provides embeddable web widgets that display live results across all types of elections, from the presidential race to town boards and other local offices.
-
Free AP Election data, content & services for qualifying swing state newsrooms
INN or LION members in swing states can get AP's U.S. election results and content for free, as part of the organizations’ shared commitment to providing facts around the democratic process.
Get voter insights
What matters to your community? Check out these polls and strategies for deeper, community-driven election coverage.
6 resources
-
The Citizens Agenda
The Citizens Agenda is an alternative to horse race coverage that research shows increases trust from the audience. This 44-page guide outlines ways newsrooms can put people — rather than politicians — first in their election coverage.
-
CHIP50: Trust in Institutions Tracker
This database tracks citizens' trust in key institutions like branches of government, police, hospitals and news media. Journalists can explore the differences between Democrat, Republican and Independent sentiments.
-
CHIP50: Views on Abortion Tracker
This data, collected from a survey conducted around the time the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, shows public opinion on abortion-related scenarios. It includes state-level data on the importance of abortion issues for voters.
-
MassINC Polling state-level political and issues polling
Public opinion experts will conduct state-level political and issues polls, determining survey topics in collaboration with participating newsrooms.
-
CHIP50: Local and state-level surveys
This 50-state survey led by Northeastern University and supported by the National Science Foundation will work directly with a group of newsrooms to conduct two surveys during the summer/fall of 2024, asking policy questions relevant to all voters as well as questions relevant at the state level. Reports will summarize our survey findings, providing information about the issues important to local audiences, and putting those local numbers into a national context.
-
Voter Explorer Pa.
Voter Explorer Pa., provided by The Philadelphia Inquirer, is a collection of story guides and a regularly updated database of Pennsylvania registered voters. Journalists can select voter data, filtering by age, gender, party, address, voter history, or other fields, then download the data for further analysis. Voter Explorer Pa. will help reporters quickly find local contacts for election stories; the how-to guides walk reporters through different kinds of stories that can be informed by the data.
Get training
These webinars and email courses will each help you tackle a different aspect of your newsroom's election coverage. Click the category for a full list of resources.
9 resources
-
Votebeat Beat Backgrounders
Everything you need to know to cover voting in 2024, in 30 minute doses. These courses will familiarize reporters with the basics, and provide additional materials to help them dive deeper into individual topics.
-
Trusting News webinar series: 5 strategies for useful, trusted election coverage
Join any of these October webinars to learn tangible strategies for topics from creating coverage that reaches beyond political junkies to covering hot button issues in a way that feels credible across the complicated spectrum of viewpoints.
-
Information Futures Lab Election Crisis Workshop
Join an online, immersive training event that places journalists and community leaders at the center of a fast-moving, breaking election story, challenging them to make strategic reporting decisions in real time.
-
American Press Institute: Civic Discourse and Democracy Program
API offers frequent webinars and local news summits for journalists. In 2024, they're partnering with the Associated Press to offer free monthly virtual trainings on various aspects of democracy and election coverage; planned topics include community engagement around elections, mental health and election coverage and how to retain the audiences newsrooms gain from election-related traffic bumps.
-
Voter Guide Training
This five-day email course walks journalists through how to build a voter guide, including user experience and designing an accountability roadmap.
-
Swing State Data Training
Get hands-on experience with powerful tools to research donors, lobbyists, dark money, and more.
-
Election SOS Key Dates & Trainings Calendar
This Google Calendar maintained by Election SOS provides key dates in the election cycle alongside free training for journalists on a variety of topics. Click the link to subscribe.
-
Sunlight Search Training and Research
Learn how to deeply profile candidates for public office.
-
Election SOS 2024 Trainings
Election SOS has a full slate of trainings from now until Election Day 2024, aimed at helping journalists reach new communities with their election coverage, create coverage plans and debunk mis and disinformation.
Cover misinformation
These tools will help you determine fact from fiction and track the sources of election-related dis- and mis-information in your community.
7 resources
-
Information Futures Lab Election Crisis Workshop
Join an online, immersive training event that places journalists and community leaders at the center of a fast-moving, breaking election story, challenging them to make strategic reporting decisions in real time.
-
Authoritarian Influence Tracker
This searchable database lets users sort through Russian and Chinese governments' efforts to undermine democracy around the world.
-
The Poynter Institute: Politifact
This site fact checks statements from politicians and media personalities, as well as claims making the rounds on social media sites. They're also tracking the promises both Donald Trump and Joe Biden have made on the campaign trail as they run for president.
-
Hamilton 2.0 Dashboard
This dashboard tracking narratives from Russian, Chinese and Iranian government officials and state-funded media can help journalists better determine which messaging is being pushed by government, rather than independent, channels.
-
Junkipedia: Cross-platform social media monitoring
Junkipedia helps reporters quickly search and investigate what politicians are saying online, across a range of mainstream and fringe social media sites.
-
AI Incident Database
This site catalogs the instances — including election-related instances — where AI has been used to manipulate reality.
-
Center for an Informed Public: Expert sources
Get expert help for misinformation-related reporting, including quotes from academic experts, historical context around election rumors, information about a specific rumor, data access and/or data visualization tools.
Talk to experts
These resources will connect you directly with people who can answer your election-related questions.
7 resources
-
Women Also Know Stuff: Political science experts
This large database of political science scholars who identify as women allows reporters to search by key words and view experts' contact information and research specialties.
-
Votebeat Expert Desk
Get quick-turnaround answers from election experts — former officials, tech experts, election law scholars — in a Slack channel starting October 14, moderated by Votebeat editorial director Jessica Huseman.
-
Trusted Elections Expert Database
This database from Election SOS and the American Press Institute lets journalists search for trustworthy elections experts by area of expertise, geographic state or native language.
-
Committee for Safe and Secure Elections
This group brings together election and law enforcement officials, offering resources for both to improve the safety and security of elections. For many states, they offer pocket guides to state statutes that pertain to election threats and interference; they also offer policy solutions and experts that can speak to election security solutions.
-
MIT's Election Data and Sciences Lab: Experts
MIT's Election Data and Sciences Lab maintains a list of 30+ experts in various election-related topics from all over the country.
-
Center for an Informed Public: Expert sources
Get expert help for misinformation-related reporting, including quotes from academic experts, historical context around election rumors, information about a specific rumor, data access and/or data visualization tools.
-
Sunlight Search research desk
Enlist the pros to help your newsroom conduct deep background research on political candidates. Sunlight Search will pull documents, analyze data, and produce a timeline and source list on up to three candidates that will help your reporters put together impactful stories before the election.
Cover election administration
How are your local and state elections run? These resources will help with coverage of this important topic. Click the category to view the full list of resources.
9 resources
-
Verified Voting: The Verifier
Dig in to individual county data to see the technology officials are using to count ballots. Journalists can then read more about the technology (including how it works, where else it's used and how accessible it is) and see the individual manufacturer.
-
Bipartisan Policy Center
This nonprofit center convenes both Republicans and Democrats to find solutions to complicated issues; one of those issues is election administration, and their work focuses on recommending solutions to the challenges officials and poll workers across the country face in holding fair, secure and accessible elections.
-
Elections Performance Index
This tool uses factors like voting wait time, the percentage of rejected ballots and the percentage of unreturned mail ballots to evaluate state election administrators' performance, giving officials, journalists and the public ways to track the efficacy of changes to how elections are run.
-
National Conference of State Legislatures: Election Resources
NCSL has a comprehensive list of state laws that affect elections — from how various states handle felon voting rights to poll watching to voter ID laws.
-
Center for Election Innovation & Research
This nonprofit works with election administrators around the country to help improve elections and increase voter trust in the process. When applicable, their research is broken down by individual states, making it easier for journalists to parse the relevant information for their communities.
-
Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS) Comprehensive Report
The data analysis produced by this federal agency lets users search any state, territory or county for election and voting data, such as the percentage of ballots returned via drop box or the percentage of people who registered to vote in-person.
-
Election Integrity Scorecard
The scorecard grades and ranks states based on the election security laws that the conservative think tank recommends.
-
State Voting Rights Tracker
This tracker lets users search for individual bills and laws by state or issue, and offers analysis of the measure's potential impact. Great for looking at common trends in election-related legislation.
-
Voter registration list maintenance
This site from the National Conference of State Legislatures lays out how states can "clean" their voter rolls around the country.
Protect yourself
3 resources
-
Coalition Against Online Violence: Resources for Journalists
This resource from the International Women's Media Foundation and the International Center for Journalists lays out what journalists need to to to protect themselves in various scenarios, including if they've been doxxed, are in the middle of an online attack or just want to prepare for the possibility of online abuse.
-
PEN America Digital Safety & Online Abuse Prevention Workshops
Learn how to protect yourself, your colleagues, and your employees from online abuse while covering election-related stories with one of these four workshops.
-
Extremism Coverage Prep
This training from Hearken's Election SOS — available for free once participants are vetted — includes videos and other resources to help journalists and their newsrooms develop appropriate editorial policies and stay safe when covering extremism.
Cover voting rights/legal issues
7 resources
-
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press: Election Legal Guide
This organization supports reporters around the country, protecting their legal rights. One of their initiatives is an extensive Election Legal Guide, outlining journalists' rights while covering campaign events and reporting around polling places. There is more in-depth information for a handful of battleground states, and the guide is available in both English and Spanish.
-
Democracy Docket: Court Case Database
This online site founded by Democratic attorney Marc Elias includes a searchable database of decided and pending court cases shaping voting rights around the country.
-
National Conference of State Legislatures: Election Resources
NCSL has a comprehensive list of state laws that affect elections — from how various states handle felon voting rights to poll watching to voter ID laws.
-
Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections
This group formed by former Republican officials funds election legal challenges that they view as undermining democracy. They argue for election rules established by lawmakers — not the courts — and the enforcement of election laws.
-
State Voting Rights Tracker
This tracker lets users search for individual bills and laws by state or issue, and offers analysis of the measure's potential impact. Great for looking at common trends in election-related legislation.
-
Media Guide on Covering Elections and Voting
This comprehensive guide will help you understand variability in election laws and practices, and learn how to better navigate misinformation, legal changes, and the logistical aspects of election coverage.
-
Protect the Vote: Legal Activity
This site run by the Republican National Committee tracks legal challenges to election laws that involve the RNC and Republican groups across the country.
Cover political violence
6 resources
-
Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative: Geographies of Risk and Resilience
Use these interactive mapping tools to identify emerging hotspots for political violence risk and connect with community groups working to counter these threats around the country.
-
U.S. Department of Justice: Election Threats
This site from the DOJ collects federal guidance about how to respond to threats against election workers, and includes a list of enforcement actions involving threats to elections.
-
Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative: Understanding Threats and Harassment Against Local Officials
This research project tracks the threats local officials face in their communities through surveys, in-depth interviews and event data, all made available for public use.
-
Extremism Coverage Prep
This training from Hearken's Election SOS — available for free once participants are vetted — includes videos and other resources to help journalists and their newsrooms develop appropriate editorial policies and stay safe when covering extremism.
-
Election SOS Newsroom Help Desk: Navigating election coverage after Trump rally shooting
This post from Election SOS rounds up key resources for newsrooms covering political violence, compiled immediately after the June assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
-
Princeton's Bridging Divides Initiative: De-escalation Resources
This interactive tool connects users with a network of de-escalation, community safety, and bystander training practitioners and resources from all around the country.