Welcome to The Downballot, the premier source of information about the thousands of elections below the presidency, from Senate to city council.
Journalists, activists, political professionals, academics, and enthusiasts have all relied on us for years. Subscribers know they can trust us to provide accurate, comprehensive coverage of these often-overlooked but critically important elections. When it comes to downballot races, our readers are guaranteed to be the best informed in their fields.
If you'd like to support us, the most important thing you can do is become a paid subscriber. Our operations are 100% reader-supported. We have no big backers—no corporate sponsors, no billionaire benefactors.
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At The Downballot, it all starts with our Morning Digest newsletter, in which we summarize and analyze every important development in every competitive race across the country, every weekday without fail.
Our focus includes—but is by no means limited to—contests for the Senate, the House, governor, attorney general, secretary of state, state supreme court, state legislature, mayor, county executive, district attorney, sheriff, and city council, as well as ballot measures. If there's a race too obscure for us, we have yet to come across it.
We also produce a wide variety of unique data sets that shed light on all of these elections and set the gold standard for accuracy and transparency.
We're best known for our calculations of the results of every presidential election broken down for each of the nation's 435 congressional districts, but we also publish special election trackers, election calendars, fundraising charts, demographic data, and much, much more. Find it all in our Ultimate Data Guide!
In addition, we put out a podcast every Thursday morning where we take a closer look at the key downballot stories making news each week and interview major political players for insights into their work. Our guests have included members of Congress, top campaign operatives, fellow election analysts, and even Julia Louis-Dreyfus! Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform right here.
We've got a long pedigree: Our publisher, David Nir, first began covering elections at the Swing State Project in 2003 and launched the Morning Digest in 2009. In 2011, his site was acquired by Daily Kos and became Daily Kos Elections. He was joined in 2014 by Jeff Singer, chief writer of the Morning Digest and the steward of some of our most important data projects.
David and Jeff are assisted by a close-knit group of longtime contributors, including David Beard, Daniel Donner, David Jarman, James Lambert, Steve Singiser, Stephen Wolf, and Quinn Yeargain.
Above all else, we are committed to presenting objective, truthful information, regardless of what our personal political preferences might be. No one can win elections by exhorting their side to clap harder and cheer louder. Only by confronting reality as it stands can we safeguard our democracy for future generations.
The Downballot was recognized as a Featured Publication by Substack in September of 2024, three weeks after our launch.
The Downballot does not endorse candidates for public office.
