Drew DeSilver

Doug Jones' victory in Alabama gives that state its first split Senate delegation in more than two decades. But delegations with two senators of different parties still are much less common than they used to be: With 14 split delegations, the current Senate is tied for the second-fewest in the past 50 years.

Senate seats have rarely flipped to the other party in recent special elections, and turnout usually lags compared with regular elections for the same seat.

As we approach the 10th anniversary of the start of the Great Recession, five ways in which the U.S. workforce has changed over the past decade.

Since the end of World War II, there have been 225 successful coups (counting the events in Zimbabwe) in countries with populations greater than 500,000, according to the Center for Systemic Peace, which maintains extensive datasets on various forms of armed conflict and political violence. Most coups occurred during the height of the Cold War, from the 1960s through the 1980s.

Tax burdens in the U.S. are lower than most of its developed-nation peers – in some cases, well below.

Taxpayers with incomes of $200,000 or more paid well over half (58.8%) of federal income taxes, though they accounted for only 4.5% of all returns filed (6.8% of all taxable returns). By contrast, taxpayers with incomes below $30,000 filed nearly 44% of all returns but paid just 1.4% of all federal income tax.

Public debt has increased sharply in many countries in recent years, particularly during and after the Great Recession.

Although manufacturing jobs have fallen over the past three decades, improved productivity has kept manufacturing output rising – contrary to what many Americans believe. But over the past few years, productivity growth has been sluggish at best.

Special elections to the U.S. House of Representatives tend to be low-turnout events, historically speaking, and seldom result in seats switching from one party to another.

Many Europeans, Japanese and Americans feel better today about their nations' economies than they did before the financial crisis, according to a new global survey by Pew Research Center. But those public sentiments aren't always aligned with a nation's actual economic performance.