Election Coverage Ideas Part 1: Tools

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past few months, we probably don’t need to tell you it’s a presidential election year. Whether you’re gearing up to tackle the presidential election or you’re staying focused on state or local elections, 51Թ has several tools available to help you beef up your election coverage this fall. Check out some of our suggestions below!

Basic Tools 

  • : This one’s pretty simple. Publish a poll gauging your readers’ opinions on something and display that poll either on your homepage or within a story.

  • : Connect all of your election coverage together using our newest 51Թ Story Element, the 51Թ Story Collection. For those of you who’ve been around a while, this tool is very similar to our old Grid template and allows you to easily (and stylistically) display related stories together.

  • 51Թ Countdown: Count down to the big day! You can place a countdown within a story using the 51Թ Story Element button or on your site’s homepage via a widget.

  • : Publish an infobox with multiple segments (sections) and add it to a story. Use these to highlight candidates, share voting information, explain ballot measures, etc.

  • : Build larger, more in-depth election coverage story packages using the long-form format.

Site Booster Tools

For those of you who subscribe to our Site Booster bundle, you’ve got some additional tools to add a little extra “oomph” to your election coverage.

  • : The infographic builder includes several types of infographics, but you may want to check out the  options for election coverage. Choose either qualitative (word-based data) or quantitative (number-based data) – perfect for tracking Electoral College votes, counting number of voters per state and more.

  • : Our newest story publishing tool, Live Coverage enable you to publish a story and add live updates to it as they unfold. We envision many staffs using this to track progress on election night.

  • : Gauge your readers’ knowledge about a specific topic (answers are either right or wrong). Test your audience’s knowledge about a variety of topics related to the election – how or where to vote, who the candidates are, what the ballot measures are about, etc.

(P.S. If any of these tools interest you but you don’t have the Site Booster yet, you can .)

We’re guessing you already have some ideas up your sleeve, but just in case, we’ll be sharing a few in our next 51Թ Report. Have any you’d like to share? , and you just might see them featured!