Common Atlas

Public records, drawn with care.

A small library of deep, interactive atlases built from official public data. Each one names its source on every figure, shows its gaps as gaps, and lets you share exactly what you’re looking at.

Map of the 2024 presidential vote by county: Democratic margins in blue, Republican in red. Alaska and Connecticut, which don’t report county results, are hatched.
The 2024 presidential vote, county by county, from Ballot Atlas. Hatched areas report no county-level result (Alaska and, in 2024, Connecticut), so none is drawn.

The atlases

Few of them, each made deeply. A new atlas opens when it’s ready to be lived in, not before. The bars show how far back each one’s records reach.

Ballot Atlas

Open at ballotatlas.app

American elections, mapped and modeled. Presidential results by state since 1900 and by county since 2000, every House race since 1920, the Senate since 1976, and the 2026 midterms as they’re counted, with the tools an election-night analyst reaches for: swings, benchmarks, bellwethers and what-if scenarios.

Open Ballot Atlas
  1. Party control of the House1789–now
  2. Presidential results by state1900–2024
  3. Every House race1920–now
  4. Senate races1976–now
  5. Presidential results by county2000–2024

Electricity Atlas

Open at electricity.commonatlas.app

The US electric grid hour by hour since July 2015, from the Energy Information Administration’s Form EIA-930: how much power each region uses, what generates it and who sends power to whom, updated daily. Around it, the power plants built and retired, carbon by the hour, and the days the grid came under strain.

Open Electricity Atlas
  1. Power plants built and retired2011–now
  2. Hourly demand, generation and flows2015–now
  3. Carbon by the hour2018–now

Housing Atlas

Open at housing.commonatlas.app

What Americans pay to live somewhere, county by county: rent burden from the Census Bureau’s surveys, home-price change from the Federal Housing Finance Agency since 1975, and new homes authorized since 2010. A long view reaches back to 1890, with every series kept on its own scale and none joined to another.

Open Housing Atlas
  1. National home prices1890–now
  2. Rent prices1914–now
  3. County census records1970–2000
  4. Home-price change by place1975–2025
  5. Rent burden, every year2005–2025
  6. New homes authorized by county2010–2025

Water Atlas

A pilot, open at water.commonatlas.app

Snow, rivers and drought across the country today, set against reference rivers measured since 1889. Then the Upper Colorado followed from mountain snow to the river at Cisco, Utah, to Lake Powell, every water year since 1964, and where the nation’s water goes.

Open Water Atlas
  1. Reference river flows1889–now
  2. Lake Powell storage1963–now
  3. Drought across the lower 482000–now
  4. Water withdrawals by state2015

How every atlas is made

Official sources, named. Data comes from the agencies and institutions that publish it, and every chart says where its numbers came from.

Gaps stay gaps. Missing or unreported data is drawn as missing. Nothing is filled in, smoothed over or quietly estimated.

Every view is a link. The year, the place, the comparison you set up: share it, and the other person sees exactly what you saw.

Built to be explored. Maps you can scrub through time, search with ⌘K, export as images or data, and read on a phone.