The Downballot

How you know Election Day is almost upon us: It's time for The Downballot's annual prediction contest, with prizes sponsored by the gloriously delicious GreensBabka.com! And this year's contest is bigger and badder than ever. Click below for full details & a link to submit your guesses. Good luck!

"You are the company you keep," John Kulewicz, the Democratic nominee for attorney general, says of Republican foe Keith Faber’s decision to keep campaigning with Ramaswamy after his instantly infamous ad.

It's not just Ohio's governorship and Senate race that the GOP has to fret about next week. Ohio Democrats' strength, plus Vivek Ramaswamy’s own self-inflicted wounds, give them the chance to flip more key offices the GOP has held since the 2010 wave.

This summer, we banned low-rent poll aggregation engagement farms from our Discord server. Didn’t need any further examples to back us up, but we sure got one tonight.

Just learned about a new BlueSky feature

sponsored by green’s babka? for real? i wish I was sponsored by green‘s babka

The amount of potential new trifectas that could be formed is a very underlooked story of this election. D’s have a very real chance to remake the political map for years to come with D’s favored or in play to create D trifectas in MN, WI, MI, PA, AZ, NV, and VT while Republicans likely won’t get

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Via @stephenjcaruso.bsky.social, who really should post here more than there, I'm counting $8.52M from Jeffrey Yass to try to preserve a GOP state senate majority in PA (candidate giving, SRCC, and State GOP) and another $1.1M to stanch the bleeding in the state house, where Dems lead 103-100.

House Majority PAC's director of independent expenditures x.com/shripal734/s...

If she wins a full term in November, Fire Thunder would join a growing number of Indigenous women successfully seeking higher office across the country. In Montana, the success of these candidates is a result of decades of women-led organizing on the ground.

Arizona Democrats may be on the verge of passing sweeping expansions to voting access if they win. Arizona Republicans have relentlessly tried to suppress voters, leading to the Supreme Court’s 2021 Brnovich ruling where Alito gutted Voting Rights Act section 2 protections for voting access

Gov. Katie Hobbs has spent her four years in office with a hostile GOP legislature. But Hobbs' lead in the polls gives Democrats their best chance in generations to break the GOP's hold over the state Senate and state House—a body the GOP flipped in *1966* and has yet to lose.

Next week's elections could give Arizona Democrats something they haven't had in 60 years: control of the governorship and both chambers of the legislature.

Best day for democracy worldwide in quite some time: Brazil’s center-left president won the runoff in an upset, blocking the far-right from gaining unified power. Serbia’s right-wing authoritarian government finally lost control of parliament after more than a decade in power

The Downballot's special sale for our 23rd anniversary ends *tonight* at midnight! We're working super hard in this last push before Election Day, so we'd be extremely grateful for your support. You can unlock access to all our paywalled content & subscriber perks for just $7 a month or $58 a year!

We've pulled new FEC reports (covering the first two weeks of October) for all House & Senate candidates. Dems continue to crush: Raised: D: $123 million R: $39 million Spent: D: $193 million R: $130 million Cash: D: $466 million R: $300 million See both tabs of the linked spreadsheet.

Quite the headline

According to a YouGov/UMass Lowell poll released today, 58% of people would support a law banning online or app-based sports gambling and prediction markets (Kalshi/Polymarket was a listed example).

While Jackson has used his massive general election ad buys to link himself to outgoing Gov. Brian Kemp and avoid talking about Trump, he's now going to speak at Trump's rally Saturday. Jackson's team days earlier said he'd skip it to campaign elsewhere as a "force multiplier."

We're incredibly proud that not one but two articles in @pspolisci.bsky.social's special issue on forecasting the midterm elections make use of The Downballot's data! One on special elections by @charlesrhunt.com, and another by @algaraca.bsky.social et al. using presidential results by district.

Also in our new Digest: • National GOP sends money to an unexpectedly competitive governor race in Nebraska. • Is this South Florida Democrat secure or in a challenging race? Even Republicans can't agree. • Democrats launch a late effort to beat New Jersey congressman who was once a Democrat.

"It’s time to elect Keisha Lance Bottoms our next governor," Sen. Jon Ossoff declares in a new ad for her campaign to lead Georgia. Polls show a tight race between Bottoms and Republican Rick Jackson, a billionaire who has outspent her 4 to 1 on the air.

“Pre-general” reports, covering the first two weeks of October, are due at the FEC before midnight tonight for all Senate and House candidates. These are the last regular fundraising reports before the election, though campaigns must disclose any $1,000+ donations within 48 hours from here on out.

RAGBRAI (The Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa) is one of the most celebrated bike rides in the world.

Once mass spam texts were made legal, younger donors vanished, leaving a grassroots fundraising machine that subsists on squeezing vulnerable seniors, some of whom give hundreds of times a day. It’s a horrific model. Consultants get generationally wealthy, and the party hollows out its future.

It's notable that, for all the talk of how the Minnesota Senate race is "tightening," there's been no serious outside spending from either party there even as both sides converge on *Mississippi*.

Emerson's poll finds Republican Sen. Mike Rounds with 50-42 lead over independent Brian Bengs in race where the Democratic nominee dropped out this summer. A separate Mason-Dixon poll released earlier Thursday has Rounds up 56-37. www.sdnewswatch.org/south-dakota...

Rare poll of South Dakota finds voters overwhelmingly rejecting measure to repeal Medicaid expansion if federal support for expansion ever falls below 90% of its cost. Emerson College also shows huge majority rejecting plan to require 60% to amend constitution. www.keloland.com/keloland-com...

talking about fakers open.substack.com/live-stream/...

The team at @fiftyplusone.news obliterated not one but two "polling" firms this week: one that admitted to faking its data just as 50+1 about to publish an exposé, and another (with ties to the first) that vanished into thin air after 50+1 started investigating it. Follow them. It's a must.

Our investigation into allegations of data fabrication at the firm SoCal Strategies, and an alleged association with the admittedly fraudulent firm Wedgewood Polls, has resulted in the pollster wiping itself from the face of the earth. Full story at 50+1: blog.fiftyplusone.news/p/more-polls...

When we first calculated the Named Congressional Ballot based on September House polls (57 in total), it was D+9.4.

With 60 October House polls in the books, we can now update this figure with October 2026 values for the Named Congressional Ballot and the Generic Congressional Ballot (GCB from @fiftyplusone.news). NCB is now D+ 11.5; GCB is D +9.1 Full explanation here: www.the-downballot.com/p/house-race...

What the Attorney General of the United States seems to not understand, but the people who matter do, is that Congress hasn’t given DOJ any authority to block states from certifying the election. This isn’t a thing. And we don’t have to pretend it’s a thing just because he says it’s a thing.

Excited our 2026 midterm forecast is in print w/ @isaachale.bsky.social , Seon, & @edwardheadington.bsky.social Updated quarterly approval & generic ballot series (1937–) predicts clear Dem House, v. narrow GOP Senate. With @the-downballot.com data, we flag potential post-Callais votes-seats bias.

Mega-donors giving $1M+ make up 54% of GOP fundraising so far this cycle. It’s not just billionaires lining up for Trump’s open air auction of federal policy and contracts. The GOP also spammed and grifted its own small-dollar base into oblivion.

"The wall has broken. The enemy is inside the fort," one national Republican political operative told @axios.com. "We are now fighting hand to hand."

Could Missouri Republicans' gerrymandering crusade actually *cost* them a seat?

Republicans tried to gerrymander this Missouri congressional seat out of contention, but their map got blocked. Now the top GOP super PAC is airing ads to boost Rep. Ann Wagner against Democrat Fred Wellman.