David Nir on downballot races to watch
"If there's one takeaway I hope readers of PN take from this, it’s to pay attention to these state supreme court races."
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With so much on the line at the top of the ticket, it’s understandable if you haven’t been paying close attention to downballot races this year. That’s where David Nir comes in.
Nir is publisher of The Downballot. The name is self-explanatory, but if you’re not familiar, the publication is a fantastic source of information and analysis for any and all races that aren’t presidential in nature — everything from important city council elections to US Senate contests. You can subscribe here, and I highly recommend you do so.
I connected with Nir earlier this week to get his insights into the prospects of Democrats flipping the House, the importance of state supreme court races in places like North Carolina and Michigan, best practices for following polls without self-gaslighting or driving yourself crazy, and why he thinks Democrats have no choice but to sink a lot of resources into longshot bids to take out Ted Cruz and Rick Scott.
“The good piece of news is that Democrats are flush with cash,” he said. “They’ve been outraising Republicans at every level in every way — candidates, Super PACs, and so forth. What that means is that Democrats can probably afford to take another gamble on Texas and Florida without shortchanging any other races.”
I even got Nir to weigh in on the tight presidential race — a discussion he joked felt a bit like “betraying the mission of The Downballot.”
A transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows.
Aaron Rupar
You wrote last week about Ted Cruz and Rick Scott, both of whom seem to be in some trouble, but we’ve seen this movie before in Texas and Florida and it typically ends in Democratic heartbreak. Do you think this year could be different?
David Nir
The Democratic dream of turning Texas blue has been alive for as long as I've been covering politics, and that's been more than 20 years. It's a tough play to bet on.
Democrats are in a position where there's one piece of bad news and one piece of good news. The bad news is that the polling in Montana for John Tester has been quite rough and the odds of holding that seat have dropped. It's not over, but you definitely have to think Republicans have the advantage there now. That means that if Democrats want to have any hope of retaining the Senate, they have to look for other opportunities. That’s where Texas and Florida and also maybe Nebraska come into play.
The good piece of news is that Democrats are flush with cash. They’ve been outraising Republicans at every level in every way — candidates, Super PACs, and so forth. What that means is that Democrats can probably afford to take another gamble on Texas and Florida without shortchanging any other races. Tester is going to have all of the resources he needs. So even if the DSCC and other groups get behind Colin Allred in Texas and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in Florida, there’s no way that they're going to be abandoning any other race. It’s a gamble that you have to take, but also one you can afford to make.
Aaron Rupar
Back when Biden was still running, there was some debate over how important a money advantage is in a presidential race where both candidates are quite well known, but how vital is it in Senate races?
David Nir
I would just caution that folks like us who follow this stuff all the time have a skewed view of just how well known these candidates are — even incumbents like Rick Scott and Ted Cruz. People might know their names, but they don't know what they stand for or important facts about them. But you’re right that there are definitely more opportunities to define candidates and frame the race the further down the ballot you go.
Aaron Rupar
Shifting over to the House side, it seems the conventional wisdom is that Dems have a pretty good shot of flipping it back to Democratic control. Is that your read as well?
David Nir
I would give Democrats a slight advantage in terms of being able to flip the House. The playing field is quite small to begin with — it’s much smaller than it was two years ago — but it’s expanding a little bit and virtually all of that expansion has been to red seats. We are seeing districts Republicans currently hold that the GOP is now sweating in ways that they previously weren't.
A really good example of this is Iowa's 1st congressional district, which is held by Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who’s being challenged by Christina Bohannan. All of the sudden Republicans and Democrats alike are both devoting far more resources to this race because it appears that this one could actually flip.
We aren’t really seeing the inverse of this — Republicans making headway into new Democratic districts that weren't really previously at the center of the battlefield. Obviously that means good things for Democrats. And once again the fundraising has been far stronger on the Democratic side. Democrats just have far more resources whether you’re talking about candidates themselves or super PACs.
Aaron Rupar
The Downballot has also covered Mark Robinson. At Public Notice, we wrote last week about the possibility that his toxicity could cost North Carolina for Donald Trump.
How likely do you think that is?
David Nir
This is exactly the question that we discussed on the most recent edition of our podcast, which comes out every Thursday morning. We have never seen a candidate quite as toxic as Mark Robinson on the ballot in a presidential year, or really in any year. The idea of a candidate lower on the ticket affecting one higher up is normally pretty outlandish, but if it could ever happen, it's going to be here because Robinson is so uniquely bad.
Most governor's races don't happen in presidential years, so that makes this unusual on its own. And if there are Republicans who simply stay home because they're so depressed about the state of GOP politics in North Carolina, that could have a real impact, especially further down the ticket.
North Carolina has tons of competitive races this year at the statewide level. With Josh Stein running for governor, the race to replace him as attorney general is open. Democrats could hold that because Robinson is depressing the rest of the ticket. Democrats are also trying to break the GOP’s ill-gotten super majorities thanks to extreme GOP gerrymanders in the state legislature. They only need a handful of seats to be able to do that. Mark Robinson could definitely help Democrats there.
There are even other races beyond that, including a very important state supreme court race where Democrats are trying to defend the seat held by incumbent Allison Riggs. I think that we are going to see something potentially amazing happen with Mark Robinson. It’s certainly an extraordinary natural experiment.
Aaron Rupar
I know your focus is on downballot races, but the fact Harris and Trump are spending so much time in North Carolina seems to be a good sign for her. Is it even possible for Trump to get to 270 electoral votes if he doesn’t win North Carolina?
David Nir
I feel like I'm betraying the mission of The Downballot to talk about presidential politics, but I will indulge. The presidential polling has been so close in all of the swing states, on such a knife’s edge, that maybe we do see something weird happen here. I would be a little reluctant to say that if Trump loses North Carolina, it's game over for him, because we could see an unexpected array of swing states on either side in the final analysis. Also, North Carolina just experienced a devastating hurricane that has really affected a lot of people and may also affect access to voting there. So I'd be really reluctant to make any predictions about North Carolina.
Aaron Rupar
This is obviously the first presidential since the Dobbs decision in June 2022, and it feels like Democrats have barely lost an election since. Ten states, including Florida and Arizona, have abortion measures on the ballot this year. How much of a drag do you think those measures end up being on Republican candidates?
David Nir
One way to look at this is to consider how viciously Republicans have fought to keep these measures off ballots in the first place, often through very questionable or underhanded means, and how viciously they're fighting against them now. The state that I point to in particular is Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis has literally started using taxpayer funds and is directing the state government to take a side in the fight over what's called Amendment 4 in Florida, which would restore abortion rights in the state. It looks like something straight out of it authoritarian playbook. It's a total dictator move.
Aaron Rupar
Beyond the presidential and congressional races, what are some other races you’re watching particularly closely this cycle?
David Nir
My number one answer to this question is state supreme courts. These are such important races and really until recent years haven’t gotten the attention they deserve from progressives. Conservatives have understood the power of these positions for a long time and worked very hard to bend these state courts to their will. Progressives have finally started fighting back.
We saw how successful this was in Wisconsin where last year, for the first time in 15 years, progressives retook a majority on the state supreme court. That immediately had huge consequences. The most important one was that the state supreme court struck down gerrymandered Republican maps of the state legislature. Wisconsin will finally have its first fair legislative maps in many, many years, and Democrats now have a chance to win a majority in the lower chamber.
The Wisconsin Assembly is a little bit more of a long-term project, as is the state Senate because only half the seats are up each cycle. But the point is we can see the impact of having independent-minded justices who are committed to the rule of law on state supreme courts.
There are a bunch more states with competitive supreme court races this year. In addition to the North Carolina contest I mentioned earlier, Michigan Republicans could flip that court this year, or Democrats could expand their majority. Ohio Democrats could actually flip that court if they sweep all three seats. It's a long shot, but it's not impossible.
In Montana, there are two liberal open seats up on that court. If conservatives flip those, they would nominally have a majority of conservative justices, and that's a really important one because that court has done a lot to protect abortion rights. Finally, in Arizona, there are two conservative justices who are up for retention elections. That means voters get to vote yes or no on those two justices. Both of them voted to uphold the state's 1864 near total ban on abortion. And if they are not retained, if they're kicked out of office, then Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs would get to appoint replacements.
These elections matter so, so much. If there's one takeaway I hope readers of Public Notice take from this, it’s to pay attention to these state supreme court races.
Aaron Rupar
I get a lot of DMs from people who are anxious about the polls being so tight, and I’m sure you hear lots of stuff like that too. What are some best practices you’d recommend to people who want to follow polls closely and learn useful information from them without driving themselves crazy every time one comes out that suggests Trump could win?
David Nir
This is an excellent question. It’s very hard for polls to tell us what we want to know when elections are so close. If you have a poll that shows one candidate up 60 to 40 and they wind up winning 58 to 42, no one really cares even though that poll missed by four points because you got the winner, right? But if a poll shows a candidate winning 51 to 49 and they wind up losing 49 to 51, that's also a four point difference, but everyone gets super upset because you got the winner wrong.
If you’re invested in politics, but the polls are driving you nuts, it’s completely acceptable to stop following them and put them out of your mind for the remainder of this election cycle because they're never going to be able to tell us in such a close race exactly who is winning and who is losing. That's not an anti-intellectual approach to take. It's just acknowledging the reality of polling.
That said, it's hard to quit the polling drug. I find that the most reliable and responsible site for sharing polling information is 538. I can't recommend their polling aggregation enough. They invest a lot of effort into trying to evaluate pollsters and keeping out low quality pollsters out of their averages.
The most important thing is to pay attention to averages. Don’t let one single poll dictate your beliefs about a particular race. You should always look at the aggregates, and 538 does a really good job putting those together. That doesn't mean that it's necessarily going to be right, but it does mean that you are not going to get thrown off by outliers or polls that are ridiculous for one reason or another.
That’s it for today
We’ll be back with more tomorrow. Thanks as always for your support.
That was informative. Why hasn't David Nir apperared earlier? In multiple interviews and in greater depth? He's clearly well worth it.
Nir is right. Here in Ohio I'm desperately hoping for a big D win in the supreme court. Having the governor's son on the supreme court is horrendous nepotism. How can he ever not recuse himself when his father is involved? But of course, he never does. This was a very helpful read today. Thank you.