All eyes in the United States are on the results of the 2024 election on Tuesday and many of them will likely look to the New York Times for coverage.
Famously, the New York Times has used the Needle in previous elections to show live forecasts in the form of a handy semicircle chart. On it, a needle moves back and forth between sections to showcase the confidence of how a race is going. After the 2016 election, the Needle was often cited as a source of anxiety for election watchers, but also spawned some pretty great memes.
However, for 2024, the Needle might be in jeopardy due to a strike organized by tech workers from the New York Times. The nearly 700 unionized workers in the New York Times Tech Guild have been looking to reach an agreement with the organization on a new contract with “better wages, hours, benefits and job security” among other things.
As such, the Needle may or may not make an appearance on Tuesday.
As a result, I do not know whether we will be able to publish the needle. There are good reasons to bet against it, though perhaps there are scenarios where things are running super smoothly; alternately, we hit bugs at the start and there's no chance.
— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) November 5, 2024
Guess we’ll have to see how things unfold!
