Tuesday, November 03, 2026

BEA Wants Your Feedback on BEA Data Tools

 

US Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis

We Want Your Feedback on BEA Data Tools

The Bureau of Economic Analysis is planning to modernize our data dissemination tools, particularly our Application Programming Interface (API) and interactive data tables. 
  • User feedback is important for developing the best experience in BEA’s updated systems. 
  • We want to hear what you like about our current data tools and what could be improved.

We’re seeking responses from users of all types—researchers, policymakers, media, students, and more—and we encourage feedback based on your specific expertise, experience, or interest. The questions are open-ended: responses can be abstract and visionary or highly concrete and technical.

We’d like to know, for example, which new features would make our API and interactive data tables more useful; which data formats and access methods are best for you; and which changes would help BEA data offerings better integrate with modern analytics tools, such as Python, R, and super intelligence (artificial intelligence).

For the full questions and how to submit answers, visit bea.gov/form/feedback. We’re collecting feedback through Dec. 31, 2026.

API and Interactive Tables User Survey

Existing Features

Expanded Features

Consumption Preferences

Modern Analytic Integration

Delivery Mechanisms

Persona

Which of the following best describes your role?
Contact Information
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

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USA FACTS: How to spot a red or blue wave when you see one

 

USAFacts

How to know a red or blue wave when you see one

Media outlets and political pundits sometimes invoke a coming partisan “wave,” meaning conditions in Congressional races might lead one party to gain serious ground on the other. But what does a red or blue wave look like? There’s no quantifiable definition of a political wave, but data on past elections can provide context to help you spot one in the midterms.  

  • Some table setting: With one day to Election Day, Republicans outnumber Democrats in the in the House 218–214 and 53–45 (not including two Independents who caucus with the Democrats) in the Senate.  
     

  • A wave’s size might be best understood as a margin change between the majority and minority parties, or the total swing in seats. In 2010, a red wave brought the House from a 79-seat Democratic majority to a 49-seat Republican majority, for a net change of 128 seats in the margin between parties. It shifted the Senate by 12 seats, shrinking the Democratic majority from 16 seats to four.

The House has flipped 19x since the start of the modern two-party system

  • When the House of Representatives flips, it’s usually during midterm elections. Of the 19 House majority shifts since the modern two-party system started, 15 were in midterm years. This includes four of the last five midterms.  
     

  • Some chamber flipping has occurred during historic partisan waves, such as in 2010 and 2018. Sometimes, though, gains are more modest. In the 2022 midterms, Republicans picked up 10 House seats and Democrats lost nine, but it was enough to turn the House majority Republican.

See the data
USAFacts

Can elections actually be stolen?

Inside U.S. Elections

The US voting system is so complicated that people go to graduate school to study it. American elections are really a series of many smaller elections. This means there isn’t a single large election to steal. In the latest video we created with Crash Course, we cover election integrity, the Help America Vote Act of 2002, and much more.  

USAFacts

Just the Facts on how states run elections

In the latest Just the Facts video, USAFacts President Lauren Woodman traces how a system designed in 1787 transformed into myriad ways to vote. Join her as she follows voters through the process, from registering to casting a ballot to waiting on the final count. She’ll explain why no two states run elections the same way, discuss who turns out to vote, and reveal why results can take days to finalize.

Lauren Woodman Explains Elections

  • Fewer Americans now vote on Election Day than decades ago. About 79% of the votes were cast on Election Day in 2004, compared with 40% in 2024. Early in-person voting reached a record 31% in 2024, up from 8% in 2004, and mail voting rose from 13% to 29% after peaking at 43% during the 2020 pandemic.
     

  • In 2024, 73.6% of eligible citizens were registered to vote, the highest share in data going back to 2000.  
     

  • Of nearly 48 million mail ballots received in 2024, 1.2% were rejected, and just over half of those rejections were due to signature problems. Voters also cast 1.7 million provisional ballots, which require additional verification before being counted. Seventy-four percent were counted; 25% were rejected.
     

  • Most states require counties to finish counting within two weeks. California and West Virginia allow up to 30 days. Aside from automatic recounts, 41 states and Washington, DC, let a candidate or voter request a recount. Courts are responsible for ordering recounts in Illinois, Mississippi, and Tennessee.

 

Want more? We have visuals and facts for the 2026 midterms gathered for you here.

Watch the video
USAFacts

Data behind the news

Daylight saving time ended on November 1. After you get around to remembering how to reset the clock on your stove, here are the hows and whys of the biannual practice.  

Last month, the Social Security Administration announced that retired workers and other beneficiaries will receive a 3.6% cost-of-living adjustment in 2027. That’s an average of $75 a month and up from the 2.8% COLA in 2026.  

Sharpen your (virtual) pencils and take the weekly fact quiz.  

USAFacts
One last fact
US Medicaid spending reached a record high in FY 2024

The $949.2 billion spent on Medicaid in fiscal year 2024 was 3.0% higher than the year prior after adjusting for inflation. States began expanding Medicaid to all low-income adults in FY 2014. Spending has risen 45% since.  

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Web-Scraping/Web Crawlers: Opposition to Meta's new terms is growing across Europe

The new rules, originally scheduled to go into effect Oct. 30, authorize Meta to use automated software such as web scrapers and bots to “index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve, or crawl the domains, web pages, or URLs” associated with a business account.
  • The terms would have applied to all business clients, regardless of opposition, and without payment for the extracted content. 
  • Critics say Meta would have been able to use the content to potentially build products such as AI services that could compete with news publishers.
The new terms only apply to business accounts. Regular users of Meta's platforms, including Instagram and Facebook, can already have their posts scraped to train AI models as long as they are public. 
Meta delays new business terms after outcry over potential web scraping of news sites

Meta is delaying new terms for business accounts after a backlash from media companies and open-web advocates 


"A report by the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University,..said that as written, “the new terms could be used to argue that Meta can scrape content from news sites and use that content to train the company’s AI products.” Niemen Lab said it consulted three legal experts who reviewed the terms at its request. . .
At some point after Nieman Lab's report, Meta removed the word “train” from the updated terms. The company says the update is not about scraping news sites.
Meta on Oct. 29 said it was listening to feedback and said for now its existing terms remain in place. . .
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