The Downballot

So much is still unfolding from Tuesday’s extraordinary election—and our heads are still spinning—that we decided we had to do this week’s episode of The Downballot podcast live.

Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard discuss some of their top takeaways, foremost among them the intense motivation on the part of Black voters to send a message following the Supreme Court’s destruction of the Voting Rights Act. The Davids also check in on some of the biggest uncalled contests and explain exactly how Republican gerrymandering utterly failed to save the GOP.

If you enjoy listening to The Downballot podcast each week, we’d be extremely grateful if you’d consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work.

Finally, Election Day is almost here! But with literally thousands of races on the docket, how will you make sense of election night? The supremely knowledgeable Jeff Singer, our managing editor, joins us for the last pre-election episode of The Downballot podcast to give us an hour-by-hour overview of the key contests to watch.

Jeff highlights a host of races that will tell us what kind of night Democrats are having and whether they’re on track to take control of Congress. Starting with Indiana and Kentucky, where the first polls close on Tuesday, he flags a pair of House elections on deep red turf where the margins are as important as the outcome. Making his way across the country with stops in Texas, Wisconsin, Kansas, and more, Jeff wraps up with Alaska, where a pivotal battle for the Senate could determine who wins the chamber.

And remember to join us live at 6:45 PM ET on Tuesday for our election night livestream with our partners at Strength In Numbers! Click below to save a reminder to your calendar:

Apple | Google | Office 365 | Outlook | Outlook.com | Yahoo

The most appalling ad of the midterms is also the most inexplicable. On this week’s episode of The Downballot podcast, co-hosts David Nir and David Beard rip Vivek Ramaswamy for trying to weaponize his opponent’s painful experience of sexual assault as a child in a new campaign commercial. But they also simply can’t believe Ramaswamy defended the ad after it leaked before even airing on TV and explain why it’s already causing grief for other Ohio Republicans.

The Davids also welcome back Lou Jacobson to discuss his new rankings of competitive legislative chambers just published at Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Jacobson dives into a whole host of battles, telling us why Democrats are favored to flip New Hampshire’s House even as its Senate favors the GOP; why GOP supermajorities are threatened in a number of states; and why the Pennsylvania Senate is such a huge prize for Democrats.

And to take advantage of our special 23% off sale in honor of our 23rd anniversary, just click below!

Amid a years-long GOP assault on direct democracy, voters across the country have the chance to turn the tide next month. On this week’s episode of The Downballot podcast, Hannah Ledford of the Fairness Project explains how her organization supports progressive ballot measures and highlights some of the year’s most important. Two proposals in particular—one in Missouri and another in Montana—would clamp down on politicians’ ability to interfere with or roll back ballot initiatives, safeguarding the rights of citizens to pass laws they believe in.

Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard also take stock of the strangely quiet death of Republican John James’ campaign for Michigan’s open governorship, which few outlets have covered despite the high stakes. In addition, the Davids discuss two special reports The Downballot published this week: our guide to the top races for state supreme courts, and our new analysis of House polling that points to a Democratic wave.

Republicans are giving up on races that would have once been unthinkable to abandon—and rushing to save candidates in states we can scarcely believe are competitive. On this week’s episode of The Downballot podcast, co-hosts David Nir and David Beard examine the fallout from the GOP’s decision to abandon North Carolina’s Senate contest, combined with its last-minute rescue mission in Kansas of all places. Perhaps the most amazing thing: The Republican spending spree doesn’t even seem to be working.

The Davids also talk with Eric Ming at the State and Local Election Alliance, an organization devoted to deep downballot elections where control over the machinery of democracy is at stake. Eric walks us through some of SLEA’s top targets, including a judge in Nevada known for always favoring Republicans, a MAGA election administrator in Colorado who’s simply terrible at her job, and the leader of one of Texas’ biggest counties who just shut down a bunch of polling sites in Black and Latino neighborhoods.

Here’s the downside to comfortably winning year after year: Your campaign skills get rusty in a hurry. As David Nir and guest-host Joe Sudbay discuss on this week’s episode of The Downballot podcast, that problem is now in full bloom for Republicans across the country who are suddenly facing competitive elections in states where Democrats have often been an afterthought.

The roster of creaky candidates includes the likes of Roger Marshall, Pete Ricketts, and Ken Paxton, all of whom are finding out the hard way that campaigning ain’t easy. But you can even add Susan Collins to the list. After a lifetime of softball media coverage, she’s suddenly scrambling to deal with a major corruption scandal, and she isn’t handling it well.

David and Joe also put a bow on the Missouri redistricting saga, which finally came to a close days ago when the Supreme Court smacked down Republicans—and wayward judges—once and for all. But speaking of unprepared, the GOP’s long-running effort to block pro-democracy ballot measures has left them with little time, and even less money, to campaign against them.

Democrats have blown past Republicans in primary turnout this year, but does it mean anything for November? The answer is a very firm “yes,” as co-hosts David Nir and David Beard explain on this week’s episode of The Downballot podcast. In a groundbreaking special report, our colleague Daniel Donner collected more than a century’s worth of data on primaries that demonstrate a very close correlation with general election results—and it all points toward a potential landslide for Democrats of epic proportions.

The Davids also sit down with Sara Kohen, who’s running to serve on the board of directors of the Omaha Public Power District, a major electric utility that serves nearly a million people. As Kohen tells us, the OPPD’s board holds major sway over how power is generated for its customers, including whether to pursue renewable energy over fossil fuels. She also details her conversations with voters, who are particularly concerned about data centers and soaring utility bills.

Donald Trump just tried to interfere with the midterms in a very baroque way—and swiftly got smacked down by the courts. But what exactly was he trying to do, and how was he trying to do it?

On this week’s episode of The Downballot podcast, election law expert Justin Levitt explains how the U.S. Postal Service tried to issue new rules for mail ballots that would have resulted in many never reaching voters, and how election officials fought back by showing that they would have been impossible to comply with—and almost certainly illegal. Levitt also tells us why he doesn’t think similar gambits are likely to succeed in the future.

Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard also put a bow on the Missouri redistricting saga, which came to an end just after our last episode went live when the Supreme Court made it clear that the state could not use the GOP’s new gerrymander. The Davids then discuss the belated Republican rescue mission in Texas, where a floundering Ken Paxton is finally getting some help … that may have arrived too late.

Election Day is still almost two months off, but Republicans have already begun making once-touted recruits walk the plank. On this week’s episode of The Downballot podcast, co-hosts David Nir and David Beard explain why the decision by GOP power players to torpedo one of their own candidates in a New York House race that should be competitive is such a grim moment for Republicans. It may be their first act of triage, but it won’t be the last.

The Davids also recap Tuesday’s primaries in New Hampshire, including a Democratic battle in a swingy open seat that, once again, ought to be fiercely contested by Republicans but won’t be. They wrap up with the chaotic situation unfolding in Missouri, where dueling court rulings have ordered election officials to use different congressional maps in November, prompting chaos, confusion, and a massive flurry of legal filings.

We’ve all been bombarded with those histrionic text messages making over-the-top requests for donations, but they’re more than just annoying—there are hidden victims of these hyper-aggressive fundraising practices.

On this week’s episode of The Downballot podcast, Stanford political scientist Adam Bonica discusses his deep investigation into the ways Democratic organizations and “spam PACs” are deploying these frenzied messages, which end up exploiting many senior citizens—some of whom have responded by donating literally thousands of times.

But the harm runs even deeper. As Bonica explains, even as these techniques rake in huge sums from the elderly, they’ve alienated many other donors. That’s created a serious risk of a broader crash in grassroots fundraising that could seriously undermine Democrats, something Republicans have already experienced thanks to their own slash-and-burn approach.

Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard also recap Tuesday’s primaries in Massachusetts and preview next week’s contests in New Hampshire and Rhode Island. Finally, they make sense of the chaos in Alaska, where a deadline for candidates to drop out following the state’s unique top-four primary prompted a reshuffle of the November ballot in all of the top races.