Fascinating nugget of data from an Economist deep dive cross-referencing polling data with the location of datacenters: “Voters across the country are shifting towards Democrats, but for those living within 2km of a data centre the veer has been even sharper. Americans who live near a data-centre site are around six percentage points more likely to support the Democrats than those who live further away (see chart 2). Six months ago there was no such difference.” Link (requires sub).

One collection of data people obsess over in the weeks before a big election is the early vote – a relatively new feature of American elections. You can’t know who people voted for but you can know who is voting by different metrics and you can draw inferences from that. Take all this early vote data with a huge, huge grain of salt. On the one hand it’s just way to easy to interpret the numbers through the prism of one’s hopes. But there’s a bigger and more immediate reason for skepticism today. To understand what early numbers mean you need to have some theory of who is going to vote early and who late. And basically, I think, we don’t. Or not a good one.

Following up on the MAGA-under-pressure, intra-MAGA knife fights breaking out, whack everybody front. From this morning’s Politico Playbook …

PLAYBOOK IN PRINT: Natalie Harp printed a copy of yesterday’s Playbook about Susie Wiles’ future for President Donald Trump, according to two people with knowledge. It caused a “freakout,” as three people described it to Playbook. The president “blew up” over more bad headlines about his chief of staff, and Wiles and allies “burn[ed] up phones around town” trying to quell the situation.

Democrats’ prospects across the board look about as good as they have at any point in the 2026 election cycle, and about as good as could have reasonably been imagined at any point since late November 2024. House, Senate, governorships, state legislative races, really just about everything is looking pretty rosy. The point of this post isn’t to rain on any of that. But for the last week or so I’ve been wanting to write a post about just how close many of the frontline Senate races are, despite the fact that it’s plausible that Democrats could come out of this election with a majority in the low or even mid-50s. What I’m talking about here is no more than the inherent uncertainty around all polls and all elections. But it’s still worth absorbing.

Today on TPM’s Untitled Friday Live Show (Name TBD), one of TPM’s true passions: Grifting in the USA.

TPM editor Nicole LaFond, investigative reporter Hunter Walker and Head of Product Derick Dirmaier and I wanted to discuss if we are living in a golden age of grifting. But, we were interrupted by some breaking news: Katie Zacharia’s very, very special time as press secretary has come to an end.

We’re asking readers to help us with something important as well. If you’ve been reading The Brief, you know each day John Light selects a Man of the Hour. If you can’t guess who won this week, well, I doubt you really read the site.

Check it out!!