
Biden's travel schedule is lighter than almost all other U.S. presidents
Built a comprehensive database of each president's campaign travel by synthesizing multiple data sources including publicly available flight logs, Freedom of Information Act requests, and White House schedules. Collaborated with U.S. Naval Academy professor Brendan Doherty—author of "The Rise of the President's Permanent Campaign"—to cross-reference and verify the dataset against academic research standards. The data collection required establishing consistent methodology for what constituted "campaign travel" versus official duties, excluding trips to Maryland, D.C., Virginia, and home cities unless election events occurred. Created an interactive visualization in Svelte showing Biden held 90 domestic events through June 30—outpacing Trump's pandemic-limited 50 events in the same 2020 period, but trailing Obama's 2012 pace. Used ai2html to produce accessible static versions edited in Adobe Illustrator for broader distribution.
Hans Nichols