Tl;dr: I built a thing. Download it.
Next week is the first debate in this season of presidential hopefuls. The frontrunner has been indicted under dozens of counts in multiple jurisdictions. We could see multiple trials and maybe even multiple convictions between now and November 2024. We certainly will see many primaries, debates, gaffes, and scandals.
Which seems like the perfect time to launch the reboot of the successful 2020 era Presidential Hopefuls screensaver (for Mac!)!
It is a hopeless task to keep up with all the news of this race. It is even more hopeless to try to keep track of the various polls: who’s in the lead? Who’s moving up or down the ladder in the psyches of potential American voters? What wild combination of candidates will polling firms pose to us next?
Presidential Hopefuls solves all these problems and more. By using data sourced from our friends over at FiveThirtyEight, we are able to provide a unique visualization of how these men (and women!) are doing against each other. We cycle through each set of polling data, and then we size and rank each candidate according to how they did in that poll. We utilize polling quality data from FiveThirtyEight to inform how long a poll will be up on your screen.
We display each candidate as a disembodied head to remind you of the farce and absurdity of it all. The classic DVD logo screensaver of yore inspires our candidates to bounce around the screen, for what could be better than one bouncing head than several? Larger heads can plow through the smaller ones, just like they will inevitably also do on the debate stage and in the press. Occasionally, there is a bout of frenetic energy as heads try to escape other heads. This beautiful feature allows you to visualize what it might be like to run your own race to be President of the United States of America.
We the people of the USA come together every four years to elect our President. (Well, I guess we elect electors who elect our President, but that’s for another day.) I hope this screensaver may provide you some levity during the brutal process we are all to endure over the next 15 months or so.
For screensavers matter now, more than ever.
Tysm.
- Robert Tolar Haining