What’s going on with state and local elections? How do I make sure I have a say in the things happening in my community? Why should I care?
Daily Kos’ new podcast, The Downballot, aims to answer these questions and more. Every Thursday morning, the Daily Kos Elections team will be highlighting critical downballot races—from Senate to city council—that have the power to determine policy outcomes in our communities and guide the futures of the Democratic and Republican parties.
The Downballot launched this week with three episodes! You can find us on all major podcast platforms—just click right here. You can also find transcripts for each episode linked below. Here are some highlights.
In the first episode, Daily Kos Elections contributing editor David Beard spoke with Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas and political director David Nir about how Daily Kos Elections came to be. As Nir recalled, it was born out of a passion project of his, called the Swing State Project, which tracked elections in swing states:
This was such a pioneering kind of ‘wild west’ time. Markos ... was able to just do stuff because it was cool and hire people because it was cool. And I was an attorney at the time, I would write the Swing State Project on nights and weekends and Daily Kos at this time kept growing and growing. And it grew from a one-person site into a real business with real revenue, and Markos was able to hire people. And he told me, ‘I'd like to hire you full time to come do this at Daily Kos full time.’ And I was thrilled.
Beard, Nir, and Moulitsas also discussed the importance of partisan media, and why Daily Kos really fulfilled the need for a safe space for liberals to gather and discuss issues within the party and political strategy. As Beard emphasized, what Daily Kos does is rare, as we often don't see openly partisan news due to a big push around so-called “neutral” journalism ethics that pervades much of American journalism. “What's so interesting about Daily Kos to me is that it breaks news, sometimes it does a lot of reporting, it does a lot of analysis, but also, like we talked about, it endorses candidates, it pushes its readership to donate money to candidates, to donate their time, donate money to other causes sometimes,” he added.
Moulitsas agreed, noting that, “Foundationally, our nation was built on partisan press.”
Nir added his perspective, insisting that this was a crucial choice that distinguished Daily Kos from other blogs and media outlets:
One really important choice that I think Daily Kos and the Swing State Project and Daily Kos Elections made was to say, ‘You can be a partisan and still be a truth teller and still be honest,’ because I think in the traditional media, the view is that if you're a partisan, you're automatically a hack. You're a cheerleader, you're only going to say stuff that benefits your own side, you're going to conceal the truth about negative things about your own side, and that turned out not to be true at all. And Markos was really a leader in this. He was unafraid to say, ‘Democrats are screwing up here.’ Or, ‘The polls look bad,’ or, ‘We might not win this race.’ And I really took that lesson to heart.
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The second episode of The Downballot took a look into what’s in store for us in 2022, which is a huge year for downballot races. Daily Kos Elections editor Jeff Singer walked us through what we can expect. Offering an overview of the situation, Singer said:
Well, what's at stake is pretty much everything that isn't the White House. Democrats have a razor thin majority in the House. The Senate is 50-50. It would take very little for either chamber to flip. There are governors galore up this year, and they matter quite a bit, especially after Jan. 6, when Republicans are talking about using governors to try to sign more voter suppression laws, or even worse. It's not an exaggeration to say the stakes have never been higher. And we also have plenty of other races for state legislatures, for district attorneys across the country, for mayors. If it's not the White House, there's a good chance it's up.
In particular, Singer highlighted several specific Senate races he thinks are the ones to watch:
- Raphael Warnock’s seat in Georgia: “I would say the most vulnerable Senate Democrat is Georgia's Raphael Warnock … Warnock is going through quite a minefield to keep his seat. It's very doable, but he has a lot going against him.”
- Mark Kelly’s seat in Arizona: “No matter what, Arizona, it's a tough state for Democrats. Mark Kelly is going to be in for a real fight, but he won a real fight in 2020. He's well funded. It's going to be a competitive race. It's going to be another one to watch.”
- Catherine Cortez Masto’s seat in Nevada: “For Nevada, Democrats have barely won quite a few statewide races in the last few cycles. They don't have a lot of room for error in anything … Cortez Masto ... knows the state well, but in a tough year, she can definitely have problems, even against someone like [Republican candidate Adam] Laxalt, who's embraced the ‘Big Lie’ and who lost in 2018.”
- Maggie Hassan’s seat in New Hampshire: “Democrats have won [New Hampshire] in every presidential cycle from 2004 onwards, but it's a state with of plenty of swing voters, more than probably any other state. In a bad climate, New Hampshire can be very volatile. So even a candidate who isn't super well known can definitely have a good shot if the political climate's going their way.”
- Open seat in Missouri: “You have the attorney general running, Eric Schmidt. You have not one, but two House members running. Things can get out of hand very quickly here. And Democrats have a few interesting candidates. If Republicans nominate what passes for a ‘normal’ Republican candidate these days, they're probably fine. If they get [Eric] Greitens though, or if whoever comes out of this is just so banged up, the Show Me State could give us something to watch.”
Beard added that he was keeping a hopeful eye on Ohio, where an open House seat favorable to Democrats is potentially getting lost in redistricting: “It's sort of unclear. As a result, for whatever reason, [Tim Ryan] made the jump in a tough year, but he's got those same sort of union, working-class roots that Sherrod Brown comes out of and has been able to succeed in the state. So I think if anyone can win a Senate race other than Sherrod Brown for the Democrats, it's probably Tim Ryan.”
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In The Downballot’s third episode, Nir and Beard talked about redistricting in Alabama and the GOP primary for governor in Georgia before exploring the world of online polling with Civiqs co-founder Drew Linzer.
Civiqs is an entirely online polling firm, meaning that it has a lot of benefits over traditional survey methodology—which struggles with low response rates and other issues related to telephone interviewing these days—while maintaining very high standards of quality and accuracy. According to Linzer, “It's a technology that we're very excited about, and it lets us do very large quantities of polling on lots of questions all the time, everywhere, in a way that is accurate and sustainable.”
How, exactly, does Civiqs carry out its polling? Linzer explained:
It starts with getting as many people as we can into the panel from all parts of the country, all demographic characteristics, all political perspectives, so that when it comes time for us to create a sample, which is part random and part based on what we know about the demographic characteristics and political characteristics of the country, there's a very large pool of people who are interested in participating and will be eligible to participate and will participate.
Moreover, if those being polled receive an email and they click it on their phone, it's very easy to complete, even if they’re, say, out and about at the grocery store. Linzer says he has seen real advantages in terms of getting folks to answer surveys, and that it’s something they seem to enjoy doing and respond to at high rates.
“One of the biggest advantages of having an online panel in place for sampling is that people volunteer lots of demographic characteristics about themselves as part of helping us understand what Americans think,” he added. “And we can use that information to sample them accurately and make sure that we're getting a pretty accurate breakdown of people with all different characteristics at the time the sample is generated. And it makes for a much more efficient and clean process.”
Listen to The Downballot wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are released every Thursday!