For me it was the special elections just following Trump’s first election. I appreciated the data-driven analysis about the outcomes, noting areas of overperformance as signs of change.
I had stumbled across SSP earlier but didn't become a frequent follower until early 2008. That was the first major election I voted in and about the time of my own political coming of age as a lefty in a very conservative area.
I first discovered the Downballot when it was DKE, believe it or not via a Wikipedia citation. I lurked for some time, then when it moved to Substack I eventually took the plunge and started posting.
You guys are fantastic. I consider The Downballot a valuable source for election analysis, along with Primary School and Bolts Magazine, and the three collectively got me into really local and down-ticket elections as a whole. Kudos to you guys!
What elections, if any, do you remember where someone running didn’t take their race seriously and just assumed they’d win, only to learn the hard way that that’s a bad strategy?
The 2014 Senate election with Senator Mark Warner running for re-election.
Warner really didn’t actively campaign for re-election as he could have. GOP Senate Candidate Ed Gillespie ran a credible campaign that to date is Warner’s toughest race, one where Gillespie almost won. Warner only won re-election by .81% points.
This was a serious error in judgment on Warner and his re-election camp, especially considering he was a popular Governor in VA prior to being elected to the Senate. He was also dealing with the 2014 midterm campaign season, which like 2010 gave the GOP the upper hand once again as they got control over both chambers of Congress.
Warner got a much wider re-election victory in 2020.
That early result kind of set the stage for how awful that night would be. Sen. Udall losing in Colorado still annoys me even though the seat has since flipped back.
2010 Massachusetts is the poster child for this phenomenon.
Do you know just how bad at campaigning, or even just at being a candidate you have to be to lose Ted fucking Kennedy's senate seat in Massachusetts as a Democrat? It's an entirely different level.
Ahhh yes, Martha Coakley. The lame duck candidate who ran for Governor in 2014 as well, blowing Democrats’ chances both times for winning the racex when they were never supposed to lose.
But losing the Senate race to replace the late Ted Kennedy really takes the cake.
⬆️"What elections, if any, do you remember where someone running didn’t take their race seriously and just assumed they’d win, only to learn the hard way that that’s a bad strategy?"
I write a lot of postcards for down ballot candidates and I wrote a bunch for some of the special elections in 2024-25 where Dems outperformed.
One race in particular stands out - Catelin Drey ran against Christopher Prosch for an Iowa state senate seat when the incumbent Republican died in office. At stake was the GOP senate supermajority. If Prosch won, the GOP would keep the supermajority. If Drey won, the GOP would lose it.
Drey out-fundraised Prosch and I am fairly certain she had a better ground game because she was an experienced community organizer. But the reason I think he didn't take his race seriously is that the local League of Women voters wanted to hold a candidate forum. Catelin Drey agreed, but Prosch blew the League off and never responded, so the LWV cancelled it and publicly cited the reason. Prosch then tried to claim that the date didn't work in his busy schedule, but the League fact checked him and said that no date had been mentioned when they reached out to him several times to try and set something up. The local public radio station reported on this in the days before the election. Uh oh.
The special election wasn't even close - she beat him 55.2 to 44.7.
FYI, they will be facing off against each other again in Nov. I wonder if he is taking her more seriously now?
I remember when Audie Bock won a California legislator seat on the Green Party line, back in 1999 in a special election. This was entirely due to her Democratic opponent thinking the primary was the only real contest and hobnobbing in Sacramento rather than campaigning. At the time I thought it might be the beginning of serious Green Party challenges in left leaning legislative seats and possibly a three party system. I could not have been more wrong. The Green Party never embraced this strategy, instead claiming electing Republicans through spoiling close races would bring the change they desired. Bock herself lost reelection and went on to unsuccessfully challenge Barbara Lee from the right, claiming her lone vote against the War on Terror was "unpatriotic". California Greens were always just a bunch of trust fund babies anyway.
Reading that article, holy shit was this a stupid political move:
“But the California Democratic Party made a mistake that arguably created one of the biggest upsets in local political history. In an effort to boost voter turnout in black-majority, heavily Democratic precincts in Oakland, the party sent voters "chicken-dinner" vouchers that said that if they could bring their voter stub to certain locations proving that they had voted, they would receive a free chicken dinner. This created an outcry among voters who felt that it amounted to illegal vote-buying, and also deemed the offer racist and demeaning.”
Extremely racist and stunningly stupid. I don’t blame people for voting for Bock.
The most infamous examples in presidential elections are Tom Dewey (Republican nominee, 1948) and Hillary Clinton (Democratic nominee, 2016). I would argue that Dewey had even less of an excuse than HRC, as Truman was a rather unpopular incumbent seeking election to a full term, whereas the 2016 election was an open-seat race.
There are tons of examples in downballot elections. Just to name a few examples, John Ashcroft (R) in the 2000 MO-Sen race lost to a dead candidate in what was then seen as a swing state, some others that come to mind are Russ Feingold (D, WI-Sen 2010), Martha Coakley (D, MA-Sen Special 2010), Bill Nelson (D, FL-Sen 2018), and George Allen (R, VA-Sen 2006). Some more recent examples have occurred in Democratic primaries, most notably Joe Crowley losing the 2018 NY-14 Democratic primary to AOC. The most infamous example I can think of in a Republican primary was Eric Cantor in the 2014 VA-7 primary, where he lost to Dave Brat.
I was a regular on Daily Kos Elections when back in 2024 David Nir made the announcement then about moving to Substack. The Downballot was the new name at the time.
Quite honestly, I like it better on this platform.
In February 2025, when I was trying to research a detailed description of Mitch McConnell's retirement announcement and his career. I made my first comment in August/September of that year.
Many of the MLAs who left the BC Conservative Party are now joining CentreBC, as the previous leader of that party resigned to allow Peter Milobar, a serving MLA who was setting up his own party, to take over. This party was already running a candidate in next week's by-election against the BC Conservative leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay, so it has now become a straight up fight for control of the centre-right electorate. The NDP might be the ultimate benefactor due to a split vote.
In answer to the question of how I ended up here, I also went to Daily Kos Elections back in ye olden times, but came to this site via G. Elliott Morris and Strength in Numbers, as he referred to this site a lot, especially in relation to the special election margins showing a resurgent Democratic Party.
Meanwhile, Findlay decided to kick out three MLAs, including the former leader of the party that brought it into parliament, John Rustad, for calling for her resignation. There are already rumors of a potential snap election, and a split in the conservative vote is too good to pass up.
Findlay just resigned as leader, after reducing her caucus by almost 50% and contributing to a new party to compete for vote share. You could not have designed a better double agent.
I suspect this may mean Eby will hold off on the snap election, as doing so whilst the official opposition is leaderless, and overlapping with local elections, would be seen as just too cynical and opportunistic.
I first became aware of what is now known as The Downballot when I was a Daily Kos member (this was before I got kicked off of that site, and to be honest, getting kicked off of Daily Kos is the best thing that ever happened to me, as I became aware of my own serious mental health issues not long after that), and The Downballot was known as Daily Kos Elections and part of Daily Kos.
I became a regular at DKE in 2013 and followed y'all to TDB when you moved. I'd encountered DKE and SSP sporadically before that but never got to lurker stage. I was a regular on various politics, news, economics, and energy sites going back to 1994.
This isn't really directly elections-related (although a lot of the entities described are electoral entities in some form or fashion), but the man who runs the GeoBrad channel on YouTube did an entire video on the *many* types of what are loosely termed as third-level subdivisions of the United States (below counties and county equivalents).
The only notable omission made in the video is that Tennessee has its three Grand Divisions (East Tennessee, Middle Tennessee, and West Tennessee) as a subdivision above the county level. The video explained New York City's unique situation as a city spanning five counties, and, although this wasn't explained in the video, Connecticut has two different types of second-level subdivisions (ceremonial counties and planning regions).
I actually live in two different "third-level" subdivisions simultaneously: the portion of the Village of Westville that is in Georgetown Township in Vermilion County, Illinois. Technically speaking, the village is subordinate to the township, which illustrates how the Census Bureau's definitions of third-level subdivisions sometimes end up grouping subdivisions that are hierarchally above or below each other as one level of subdivision.
I became a DKE regular in 2011, when Daily Kos acquired Swing State Project. I am grateful for the non-Presidency focus, since they are too often overlooked.
I first found out about The Downballot when I was reading the Daily Kos. I read the Daily Kos for its election analysis in college and, if I remember correctly, in high school, and it was one of my go-tos for election news you don't hear about that often. And when I read that it was getting changed to The Downballot, I followed suit and became a reader since Day 1.
I came to substack in late 2023 or early 2024, so I definitely found the Downballot after that. I believe I learned about you from a Substack live/podcast with G. Elliott Morris - sort of like the one you did this week. And I heard about him from Simon Rosenberg's Hopium Chronicles.
I am a retired data analyst and self-described "data nerd", so both your substacks are right up my alley!
I'm the longest-time member so far. I came across Swing State Project on Daily Kos during the John Kerry campaign, when it was an attempt to find states that might swing to Kerry (none of them did). I started following SSP regularly and posting when it was an independent blog during the runup to the 2006 midterm elections. Maybe we should bring back linking to the video of "Another one bites the dust" every time a Democrat flips a seat this year.
For me it was the special elections just following Trump’s first election. I appreciated the data-driven analysis about the outcomes, noting areas of overperformance as signs of change.
I had stumbled across SSP earlier but didn't become a frequent follower until early 2008. That was the first major election I voted in and about the time of my own political coming of age as a lefty in a very conservative area.
I first discovered the Downballot when it was DKE, believe it or not via a Wikipedia citation. I lurked for some time, then when it moved to Substack I eventually took the plunge and started posting.
You guys are fantastic. I consider The Downballot a valuable source for election analysis, along with Primary School and Bolts Magazine, and the three collectively got me into really local and down-ticket elections as a whole. Kudos to you guys!
I have my own question for posters here.
What elections, if any, do you remember where someone running didn’t take their race seriously and just assumed they’d win, only to learn the hard way that that’s a bad strategy?
Could be any party, ideology, or person.
The 2014 Senate election with Senator Mark Warner running for re-election.
Warner really didn’t actively campaign for re-election as he could have. GOP Senate Candidate Ed Gillespie ran a credible campaign that to date is Warner’s toughest race, one where Gillespie almost won. Warner only won re-election by .81% points.
This was a serious error in judgment on Warner and his re-election camp, especially considering he was a popular Governor in VA prior to being elected to the Senate. He was also dealing with the 2014 midterm campaign season, which like 2010 gave the GOP the upper hand once again as they got control over both chambers of Congress.
Warner got a much wider re-election victory in 2020.
That early result kind of set the stage for how awful that night would be. Sen. Udall losing in Colorado still annoys me even though the seat has since flipped back.
2010 Massachusetts is the poster child for this phenomenon.
Do you know just how bad at campaigning, or even just at being a candidate you have to be to lose Ted fucking Kennedy's senate seat in Massachusetts as a Democrat? It's an entirely different level.
Ahhh yes, Martha Coakley. The lame duck candidate who ran for Governor in 2014 as well, blowing Democrats’ chances both times for winning the racex when they were never supposed to lose.
But losing the Senate race to replace the late Ted Kennedy really takes the cake.
⬆️"What elections, if any, do you remember where someone running didn’t take their race seriously and just assumed they’d win, only to learn the hard way that that’s a bad strategy?"
I write a lot of postcards for down ballot candidates and I wrote a bunch for some of the special elections in 2024-25 where Dems outperformed.
One race in particular stands out - Catelin Drey ran against Christopher Prosch for an Iowa state senate seat when the incumbent Republican died in office. At stake was the GOP senate supermajority. If Prosch won, the GOP would keep the supermajority. If Drey won, the GOP would lose it.
Drey out-fundraised Prosch and I am fairly certain she had a better ground game because she was an experienced community organizer. But the reason I think he didn't take his race seriously is that the local League of Women voters wanted to hold a candidate forum. Catelin Drey agreed, but Prosch blew the League off and never responded, so the LWV cancelled it and publicly cited the reason. Prosch then tried to claim that the date didn't work in his busy schedule, but the League fact checked him and said that no date had been mentioned when they reached out to him several times to try and set something up. The local public radio station reported on this in the days before the election. Uh oh.
The special election wasn't even close - she beat him 55.2 to 44.7.
FYI, they will be facing off against each other again in Nov. I wonder if he is taking her more seriously now?
I remember when Audie Bock won a California legislator seat on the Green Party line, back in 1999 in a special election. This was entirely due to her Democratic opponent thinking the primary was the only real contest and hobnobbing in Sacramento rather than campaigning. At the time I thought it might be the beginning of serious Green Party challenges in left leaning legislative seats and possibly a three party system. I could not have been more wrong. The Green Party never embraced this strategy, instead claiming electing Republicans through spoiling close races would bring the change they desired. Bock herself lost reelection and went on to unsuccessfully challenge Barbara Lee from the right, claiming her lone vote against the War on Terror was "unpatriotic". California Greens were always just a bunch of trust fund babies anyway.
Ah yes the musical chairs special elections - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998%E2%80%9399_California_special_elections
Reading that article, holy shit was this a stupid political move:
“But the California Democratic Party made a mistake that arguably created one of the biggest upsets in local political history. In an effort to boost voter turnout in black-majority, heavily Democratic precincts in Oakland, the party sent voters "chicken-dinner" vouchers that said that if they could bring their voter stub to certain locations proving that they had voted, they would receive a free chicken dinner. This created an outcry among voters who felt that it amounted to illegal vote-buying, and also deemed the offer racist and demeaning.”
Extremely racist and stunningly stupid. I don’t blame people for voting for Bock.
The local paper ran a “chickens coming home to roost” political cartoon after Bock won.
George Allen VA-Sen. Bill Nelson. Joe Crowley
The most infamous examples in presidential elections are Tom Dewey (Republican nominee, 1948) and Hillary Clinton (Democratic nominee, 2016). I would argue that Dewey had even less of an excuse than HRC, as Truman was a rather unpopular incumbent seeking election to a full term, whereas the 2016 election was an open-seat race.
There are tons of examples in downballot elections. Just to name a few examples, John Ashcroft (R) in the 2000 MO-Sen race lost to a dead candidate in what was then seen as a swing state, some others that come to mind are Russ Feingold (D, WI-Sen 2010), Martha Coakley (D, MA-Sen Special 2010), Bill Nelson (D, FL-Sen 2018), and George Allen (R, VA-Sen 2006). Some more recent examples have occurred in Democratic primaries, most notably Joe Crowley losing the 2018 NY-14 Democratic primary to AOC. The most infamous example I can think of in a Republican primary was Eric Cantor in the 2014 VA-7 primary, where he lost to Dave Brat.
I was a regular on Daily Kos Elections when back in 2024 David Nir made the announcement then about moving to Substack. The Downballot was the new name at the time.
Quite honestly, I like it better on this platform.
In February 2025, when I was trying to research a detailed description of Mitch McConnell's retirement announcement and his career. I made my first comment in August/September of that year.
BREAKING NEWS FROM THE NORTH: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/livestory/british-columbia-politics-independents-bc-centre-conservatives-9.7350118
Many of the MLAs who left the BC Conservative Party are now joining CentreBC, as the previous leader of that party resigned to allow Peter Milobar, a serving MLA who was setting up his own party, to take over. This party was already running a candidate in next week's by-election against the BC Conservative leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay, so it has now become a straight up fight for control of the centre-right electorate. The NDP might be the ultimate benefactor due to a split vote.
In answer to the question of how I ended up here, I also went to Daily Kos Elections back in ye olden times, but came to this site via G. Elliott Morris and Strength in Numbers, as he referred to this site a lot, especially in relation to the special election margins showing a resurgent Democratic Party.
Meanwhile, Findlay decided to kick out three MLAs, including the former leader of the party that brought it into parliament, John Rustad, for calling for her resignation. There are already rumors of a potential snap election, and a split in the conservative vote is too good to pass up.
Findlay just resigned as leader, after reducing her caucus by almost 50% and contributing to a new party to compete for vote share. You could not have designed a better double agent.
The upcoming by-election might as well be a public humiliation ritual
I suspect this may mean Eby will hold off on the snap election, as doing so whilst the official opposition is leaderless, and overlapping with local elections, would be seen as just too cynical and opportunistic.
I first became aware of what is now known as The Downballot when I was a Daily Kos member (this was before I got kicked off of that site, and to be honest, getting kicked off of Daily Kos is the best thing that ever happened to me, as I became aware of my own serious mental health issues not long after that), and The Downballot was known as Daily Kos Elections and part of Daily Kos.
I became a regular at DKE in 2013 and followed y'all to TDB when you moved. I'd encountered DKE and SSP sporadically before that but never got to lurker stage. I was a regular on various politics, news, economics, and energy sites going back to 1994.
This isn't really directly elections-related (although a lot of the entities described are electoral entities in some form or fashion), but the man who runs the GeoBrad channel on YouTube did an entire video on the *many* types of what are loosely termed as third-level subdivisions of the United States (below counties and county equivalents).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5JbDuf--ng
The only notable omission made in the video is that Tennessee has its three Grand Divisions (East Tennessee, Middle Tennessee, and West Tennessee) as a subdivision above the county level. The video explained New York City's unique situation as a city spanning five counties, and, although this wasn't explained in the video, Connecticut has two different types of second-level subdivisions (ceremonial counties and planning regions).
I actually live in two different "third-level" subdivisions simultaneously: the portion of the Village of Westville that is in Georgetown Township in Vermilion County, Illinois. Technically speaking, the village is subordinate to the township, which illustrates how the Census Bureau's definitions of third-level subdivisions sometimes end up grouping subdivisions that are hierarchally above or below each other as one level of subdivision.
I became a DKE regular in 2011, when Daily Kos acquired Swing State Project. I am grateful for the non-Presidency focus, since they are too often overlooked.
I found SwingStateProject in the run up to 2008, while looking for downballot coverage. The Downballot remains the single best site for such news.
💯
I first found out about The Downballot when I was reading the Daily Kos. I read the Daily Kos for its election analysis in college and, if I remember correctly, in high school, and it was one of my go-tos for election news you don't hear about that often. And when I read that it was getting changed to The Downballot, I followed suit and became a reader since Day 1.
Decided to go to a local football game and got whiplash after hearing about a player named Brian Poindexter, lol.
I came to substack in late 2023 or early 2024, so I definitely found the Downballot after that. I believe I learned about you from a Substack live/podcast with G. Elliott Morris - sort of like the one you did this week. And I heard about him from Simon Rosenberg's Hopium Chronicles.
I am a retired data analyst and self-described "data nerd", so both your substacks are right up my alley!
I'm the longest-time member so far. I came across Swing State Project on Daily Kos during the John Kerry campaign, when it was an attempt to find states that might swing to Kerry (none of them did). I started following SSP regularly and posting when it was an independent blog during the runup to the 2006 midterm elections. Maybe we should bring back linking to the video of "Another one bites the dust" every time a Democrat flips a seat this year.