Q and a. We are incredibly thrilled to be back, and we are grateful to our hosts at Netroots Nation. Thank you tonetroo to Netroots Nation for Live Streaming this. We are taking questions. Well be taking questions online. You can tweet at us. This panel has been about interactivity. We dont do any speeches or presentations. I am just going to give a quick introduction about who we are and we will get to your questions. We think our main progressives with information about we are they need to be fighting in is going to make us the most effective into the 2018 midterms and beyond. My dame my name is david nir. Kosn the website, daily elections. We put out a newsletter every Morning Coffee morning digest that covers morning called the morning digest. It covers raises and more. Races and more. We are responsible for the daily kos candidate endorsement program, which i am sure will come up in the panel. The team here is all involved in helping us choose who we decide to support and who we feel we should ask our community to support. On the panel here starting from my left is david beard. David works for the afl. He has been writing with daily kos since 2015. His specialty is actually international elections. He is one of the main writers on our Monthly International elections digest. Which is a great tool if you want to learn what is going on in other democracies around the world. Just to my left is jeff singer. Jeff is a senior elections writer at daily kos elections. He has been with the team since 2013. Among other things jeff is the , guy responsible for calculating the president ial 2016 president ial Election Results for every Congressional District and we are in the process of calculating it for every legislative district. So every time you see something where Hillary Clinton got 58 in such and such district, the reason why you and we know that is because of jeffs efforts. [applause] yeah, i think that deserves a round of applause. Then we have Carolyn Fiddler. She joins us from the Democratic Legislative Campaign committee. Willlc, which david jarman introduce at the moment, he rockibed it as the indie band label because there are so many thousands of legislative races that knowing about them and knowing who to support and which seeks to target in which chambers to target, it is difficult information for normal civilians to come by. That is what the dlcc is created for. We will talk about that because the leaders who create the districts, the Congressional Districts affect the house. Those gerrymander is are a big reason why the republicans are in charge today. She is the legislative expert and rights are owned newsletter called this week in the state house action which covers exactly that, the cover of goings on in the legislature and the government threat the country. To her right is daniel donner. Daniel is from portland, oregon. And dan, dans focus is maps, charts, and graphs of all kinds. Dan just loves to visualize the data. Dan has been working on a lot of visualizations of the special elections we have seen since trump was elected where democrats have been far outperforming all of the trends. We will talk about that later today. Finally david jarman, who is an instructional designer from seattle, washington. David has been working with the daily kos Election Team since 2008. Among his many specialties, he loves to take deep dives into demographic big pictures and in particular, he has been looking at the role education plays in defining the electorate in 2016 and what that will mean Going Forward. So that is enough from us. Now we will turn it over to you. We have a microphone here. If you cannot get to the microphone, it is fine. Just stand up and speak loudly. I will repeat the questions for the audience on the livestream. I have a question about the topic. I am ashamed i do not look up very much or look up. I do not know a lot about the background, but omaha, what happened to the candidate in omaha . What was the situation there, the endorsement . David nir so the question was about the election in omaha. I presume that you are talking about the omaha mayoral race. It happened earlier this year. This was a difficult situation found itself in. We endorsed a candidate, hes mellow, who was a former state legislator heath mellow, who was a former state legislator running. We did not do the Due Diligence we should have. A turned out heath mellow had record on abortion rights that we felt was not accessible for progressive communities. To ask a Progressive Community like daily kos to support him. I want to be clear we did not say that we thought democrats should not support keith mellow, that he should not run. For daily kos, we have to begin choosing be selective about the endorsements we make. In this case, we were not as selective as we should of it. When we learned about his record on abortion, we chose to withdraw the endorsement. But you know, we did not attack him publicly. Restated our reasons we stated our reasons for the withdrawal. We moved on. He wound up losing to the republican candidate. There are folks who have said he lost because of what happened with the endorsement. Some other organizations and folks were unhappy about his abortion stance. Others were unhappy about people making an issue on his stance, but the math seemed to be fairly simple. It was a two round election. In the first round, the incumbent mayor was the republican. He and mellow were separated by about two or three points. So it looks like a close race. The problem was there was a third candidate running in the race that was also a republican. The problem was there was a the third candidate, the other republican endorsed the incumbent, and ultimately that was the margin that she prevailed by. So im sure it did not help mellows campaign in the controversy, but it turned out the electorate in 2017 was to o republican for him to overcome the incumbent mayor. Next question . I actually have two, so feel free to answer the if it is not first permissible. Alabamas special senate thetion, any update with mysterious Robert Kennedy . The real candidate, who i think is done jones, might have some outside shot for the republicans. And a separate question candidate recruitment in new , york 11 in the Staten Island district. I thought it was on the triple target list this year. The first few announcements seem ed dudish. Any possible more reputable people . If im only allowed, stick with alabama. David nir the questions are about what is going on in the Alabama Senate special election and what is going on with the 11th district based on Staten Island. Any takers . So for the Alabama Senate race the primary is this , tuesday. If nobody gets you percent or takes the majority, there will be a runoff between the top two candidates. Is alabama. It is going to be a very tough race. We have a former democrat jeff , jones. He has connections. If lightning strikes and then some, maybe he will be in the right place. The problem is he has a few people running against him including robert f. Kennedy jr. He is not related to the kennedy family. There is no law saying you cannot run if you are not a real kennedy. [laughter] but the issue is, it is a pretty low energy race. The worry is that democratic voters will vote for the name they recognize, even if he is not the robert f. Kennedy jr. Or anything like that. The last two days, we have seen some democratic luminaries endorse jones. Doug lewis, alabamas only congresswoman. Nobody is spending much money. Jones is not airing any tv ads, so we will see how things look on maybe well have a runoff. Tuesday. Hopefully, kennedy will not win outright. But we will just have to see how that goes. The democrats are aware it is a problem. We are putting some effort into it. David nir new york 11 . You want to grab new york 11 too . Jeff singer sure. So that is Staten Island, it has a piece of brooklyn. It is the only part of york city that trump won. He is well on Staten Island. He won from a district that obama did pretty well there. They supported trump by double digits. The incumbent republican dan , ottoman, he is the former Staten Island district attorney. He did not indict the Police Officers who killed eric garner. That was a big controversy. He won easily. It is a really tough district. Staten island for a lot of reasons is protrump territory. It is always good to feel people. We had a candidate who stepped up. He is a former he is an army , veteran. His name escapes me at the moment, but he is a purple heart veteran. He has got a good profile, but it is a really, really tough district. New york is the new york city is the most expensive that he to air tv ads in, except for parts of new jersey. It is one of those districts where we should compete. If a year from now we are talking about this district, it is probably a really good sign for democratic hope. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, my name is kathleen allen, and i am running for the house of representatives in georgia seven district. [applause] i am a progressive and my platform is prohealth. We need to move to single payer. I would lose my job and i am ok with that. Prolife. By that i mean a respecting the life of the mother as well as the baby in her while. Womb. We need to make progress on issues in our nation. We need more congress to be braver and honest about them. And we are willing to do the work in their communities for the get to vote on issues. My question to you is, how early in the process do you endorse a progressive candidate . Do you wait until after qualifying . Do you wait until after the primary . Or do you do first come, first serve . Koshe question is how daily goes about the endorsement process. I think it is a good question. I am in the works of a lengthier post explaining this. I will try to answer in brief. Generally speaking, daily kos avoids endorsing in the primaries. It is not a hard and fast rule. We usually do, and the reason why is we do not want to be perceived as a big National Group telling people who to vote for when local folks can do an excellent job of picking their own candidates. Typically, we wait until after filinges or until a deadline if there is only one candidate who is when it who is running. In that sentiment we will probably wait on both of our endorsements until 2018. That gets to the question of timing. Other questions i could go on for far too long on this question. There are so many criteria and so many factors. One that i would mention is generally speaking, we tried to get involved in races we are not going to get huge amount of attention from d. C. Organizations. The reason we do that is because is if you are a toptier candidate running in a race, the dccc will come in with millions of dollars for you. Even if we could raise 100,000 from small donations, which is a lot of money the bang for the , buck is going to be smaller there then it will be for a lower tier race are there is less money involved. In the event there is a big wave that we have a chance to capitalize on, we can help expand that playing field. If the dccc is playing in seats one through 20 or the next dozen seats, we want to play the next after that to increase chances of folks who would not have chances. We can afford to take the risks. Our community is very open to backing candidates who are longer shots. I have always been very proud of that. Sometimes some of those longer shots have won. Thank you. Really short, sorry. I am that midler. Thattte midler, but not one. The be surprised. I do work with the dmo. I am looking anyone on any hot races. Those of you do not know, most seats are up this year, and they are mostly nonpartisan. So we have like 22,000 municipals up this year. That is not big city stuff that we should be aware of, that we should get in to the bench is to . System . [applause] david nir the question is about which municipal races are below the radar since they are so many of them that progressives should get involved in this year. Well, one that was in the past, that i think was a positive sign was in san antonio where there were a number of democratic victories i think in the spring. They included a piece that was seen as the most republican part of san antonio that the democrats were able to win, which certainly points towards positive results Going Forward. Those places that were urban or suburban that were historically republican. In terms of the 22,000 races, it is difficult for us to cover those races, just as a reality of the number of people who are involved and the number of races out there. I think there are some great blogs. They do a great work. They can really drill down onto a lower level than those of us who are looking statewide and nationally can do. David nir and i will talk about one specific race which is the detroit city race that has come across our radar. Did he get through . David nir garland gilchrist. Did he get through . David nir yes. In detroit, there have been various sorts of voting problems for a number of years. The clerk there is being challenged by kind of a young rising star sort of in gilchrist. That is a race that has come across our radar because of the importance of election administration. These are races that tend to get ignored. Also on a bigger level, secretary of state races. These are also important. On the municipal level, we probably need 10 times as many people up on this panel to really hit those, but we try to Pay Attention to the nuts and bolts, secretaries general and such. We do look at things that affect people on a daily basis but not as thoroughly day today. Not necessarily day today. To day. Thank you. Thank you. I would like to add the level of excitement i have seen on the state legislative level, under most people radar, a Record Number of candidates are running in virginia. Candidates are sucking up to run all over the country. We will see the level of excitement manifest itself. I am really excited. I am jesse bacon. Sounds like im trying to stop you, but i am not sure what is going on in these races. There is a state election in mississippi, but candidates do not run with party labels in special elections, so i have not been able to even determine with certainty who the democrat is. And less obscurely, i have been really heartened by the virginia races. Amazing candidates. I did see dropped out. One i was wondering if you had any insight if there is a replacement in the race . David nir so the question is, there is a virginia legislative race where the democrat recently dropped out. Do we have any insight to a replacement . The answer is yes. Carolyn fiddler actually yes, there was a local caucus to replace that. Zach. It brings the total of women running in seats that Hillary Clinton won from 10 to 11 she won 17 of the current seats. There are actually four seats held by republicans in the house of delegates in virginia. I am really excited about what is happening in virginia this year. Mississippi, you make a good point in terms of the special elections and the nonpartisan nature. Mississippi is a really special animal when it comes to state legislative elections. Did you know the state legislature can overturn result like they did a year ago . They are difficult to track because of the special nature of who is what down there for their specials. It is a unique system. We are keeping an eye on it. David nir for the folks leaving watching on the livestream, you can tweet us. Next question. Big question on my former childhood icon dana robacher. And other Orange County folks. Because we have this system, would that change your mind trying to endorse, because the multiple democrats screw us over and have two republicans advance. David nir the question is about dana rohrabacher. Very proputin republican in california. The 39th district . 48th. It is where arrested development is set. [laughter] david nir so the question is about if democrats are concerned about not being able to get to the november general election and also would daily kos endorse in that race early as a result . It would probably require really remarkable circumstances of the republican candidate is eluding meame right now. We dont know if he has anything going for the ability to self fund. We have the San Bernardino seat where republicans are sharing the thing down the middle, then democratic split almost equally as well. You have 2520 five, 181818. It is possible, but i would not overly sweat it. And i cant really speak to the endorsement process. I dont think we will endorse until after the primary, which again might be too late. There is a sorting process that one of the democrats developed a stronger profile whether it is through beating the other ones through fundraising or natural campaign talents. We will wait and see unfortunately. David nir next question . Good morning. Mine is jim. I am running for congress in new jerseys fourth district. [applause] thank you. So you may recall about 2. 5 years ago when governor christie screamed at that guy to sit down and shut up. That was me. [laughter] [applause] so that, that is my political calling card in new jersey. Most people know me as the sit down and shut up guy. What they dont know is i am the unapologetic progressive. I was for bernie sanders, and i am running on a very progressive campaign. I appreciate the fact you hold on not endorsing until primaries are over. I understand the difficult nature of that. Given that i have 11 months until that happens what would , your top suggestions to three someone like myself to engage the community, Daily Kos Community . I write somewhat regularly. Are there things you would say this, and this, to help raise my profile within the community and get the support im going to need to win the race . David nir that is an excellent question. What should a candidate who is interested in an endorsement to get an endorsement from daily kos . You mentioned you wrote on the site. That is the number one way to do it. Campaigns reach out to us often. I say, if you have not already, create an account. I recommend you put a name and for congress so that they know you are running for congress. Then post regularly. Nothing about daily kos that many people are familiar with, it is a very big site. There is a lot of content churning through. Not everything that you write is going to get through. It is just not possible. That is true for the stuff we write. Most of the time it goes on. Try not to get discouraged. Keep posting. Also, responding comments to users. People will have questions or even if they dont have questions engage with them. ,that is how you are going to find supporters. You probably will have in your district or state. They will want to volunteer. Share the stuff you write on social media. Possibly with your supporters list. Ly on your email it is having your supporters come to daily kos is a good thing too because not all of them are going to be familiar with it. You do not want to say, everyone, sign up for a new account and say how awesome i am. That is not good. You want it to be organic. Those are things i would emphasize. And when the Community Gets excited about someone, we take notice. That factors into our opinions. I would also suggest using the comments section, not on your own post but on stories. And just try and draw the to what you are doing and what the topic of the post is. That is the way to build your self as a member of the community. Not just being the guy who is sort of their two ways attention for himself. To raise attention to himself. I would love to have all of you read my stuff on daily kos. [laughter] [applause] josh with analyst institute. I am not running for congress. [laughter] i have a question about democratic over performance in some of the special elections. Obviously we are in a moment where democratic enthusiasm is high. And high democratic turnout is one of the factors in democratic over performance. So my concern is that that effect is larger win overall turnout is low. When overall turnout is low. I am wondering if you guys have looked at democratic over performance versus turnout . As you have been tallying these special elections and looking at how democrats are doing. David nir so the question is we , have seen democratic over performance in the special elections, but how much of it has to do with turnout in general for the special elections is lower . Have we been in analyzing it . That seems like something for dan. Daniel donner i have been looking at special elections going back to 2004, just trying to answer that question among others. I believe the answer is special elections in a midterm year or a president ial year are pretty good guides for what is going to happen during the general election. Obviously that is a real concern. Is it just low turnout when the other side is not bothering to come out . We do really well, but they will come out anyway and general election. And they may all come out in the general election, but even more them at Democratic Leaders come out. So for instance, democrats had really good years in special elections in 2000 and and 2008, and the good years in the general elections in 2006 and 2008. 2017, weve seen for a better is far better than 2006 than 2008 elections go. One measure i have been working on. If we had a general election this year, id be pretty excited. Obviously a lot can happen in the next year. Especially given the sort of leader we have in this country right now. Keep your fingers and toes crossed. We will see what comes next year. David nir so we are going to take a question here from online. It is from joe. Joe asks what are the key states , for flipping legislatures in 2018 . Well so glader , you asked. Democrats have a lot ground to make up in state legislatures across the country. We have a target rich environmen t in what is shaping up to be a very good year. Most of these special elections that we spoke of our state special elections. Are state special elections. Majority have been further down the ballot. We flipped two seats in oklahoma. [applause] Carolyn Fiddler so top targets for 2018, and lets not get ahead ahead of 2017. There are elections happening this year as well. New jersey Virginia House of delegates is democrats in a pretty severe minority there. 17 seats down. There is a chance to make serious inroads there. That impact things Like Committee make up. Democrats will have a lot more power. In terms of 2018, top targets include places like the minnesota house. Both chambers in New Hampshire, the maine senate. Lets see. This november we have a chance to pick up in Washington State senate with a special election there. If for some reason we dont thats a top target for 2018. ,and if we do, it will be a narrow one seat majority. We will want to pick up more to solidify that. The Colorado State senate has a one seat republican majority. We need to flip that. And 2018 shaping up to be good year to do that. In light of which seats on the ballot. Exactly half the chamber is up in 2018. How about thoughts on like two cycle targets . Carolyn fiddler two cycle targets include places like the michigan house. It is one of the most gerrymandered chambers in the country. Democrat keep winning more votes for the statewide for the state house there. It is a prime multicycle opportunity. If we can keep up this kind of Democratic Energy were seeing for 2018 and 2020. Other multicycle targets include places like the Florida State senate. Those maps are not great but not terrible. And given that florida is pretty evenly 5050 state. We have a real chance there. That will be huge interms of in terms of redistricting. I mentioned virginia is a multicycle target. There are some odd years like 2017 and 2019. Virginia literally always. But Wisconsin State Senate is actually another possible multicycle opportunity. Dont sleep on iowa either. Iowa tends to be it seems to be turning more republican. But people said that a decade or. O ago as well lets see if we can flip that back in 18 and 2020. David nir one for 2018, you mentioned North Carolina . Carolyn fiddler the North Carolina state house. And sorry, i forgot i would never forget the new York State Senate for 2018. Funny situation. Its not funny ha ha in North Carolina. It is never funny ha ha in North Carolina. There will be new elections on new state legislative maps in North Carolina. And the house and senate in 2018. We dont know what those maps are going to look like yet. They might not be much better than now. They cant be much worse. We have a chance to break the republican supermajority at least in the state house. That would help the democratic governor quite a lot. So dont sleep on North Carolina either. David nir all right next hi, i am david nir next question. Hi, i nancy jones. Am i got to tell you that im little overwhelmed depth and breadth of analytics expertise on this panel. And i appreciate you. You read you a lot. Most of what i know about elections outside where i live come from you guys. Thanks a lot for that. I have a kind of metaquestion that i am wondering if you all have thought about it in following your work. I am aware that some of these races that are going on have been nationalized. For instance this place and others. And others are not Getting National attention. Dont digi see, and i into it that deep, democrats are winning where they are nationalized. Im wondering if you have any numbers or if you thought about that. David nir sure, so the question is whether democrats are fairing better in 2017 elections and races that do not appear to have been nationalized versus races that have been but gotten nationalized such as the caps race inhe ossoff georgia. I am master we have any numbers. I think there is i am not sure we have any numbers. I think theres a degree races that can become national. I think georgia six is the most prominent example of that. Where the incredible enthusiasm and activism among democrats created a response among Republican Voters in the district, causing them to probably turn out higher than they would have had there been no News Coverage of it. We need to control it. Its not something we should focus on too much. For example, kansas 4 was another situation it was very under the radar. The Republican Party came in and spent money, did robocalls, ran ads at the end. May have had help to save that seat ended up around six points. , because of increased republican turn out. That was something they did because they needed to do to win the seat. That is something that is kind of beyond our control. We cant i dont think we would want to advance any activities to keep republican turn out down. Like our goal is to get voters out and get the voters who believe the same as we do and hopefully there are more of them, which i think there usually are when everybody votes. So i think we just have to kind of leave Republican Voters to the republicans. If it is low, and they dont turn out, that is great for us in terms of winning the election. But if the republicans obviously spend a lot of money to spurn voters wen out there , have to deal with that. Other thing i would say, congressional high turn out viewing. People have been very interested in them. They have all been an extremely like republican areas. The fact that it was six points in kansas four, that georgia six in montana, very close. Even though if feels not great to lose them because republicans do turn out at a higher levels than if no one had done anything, there are still really good views david nir . So just one last time, if you are watching the livestream and you want to send a question, tweet to us dkelections. If you dont want to come up to the microphone, you can tweak at us tweet at us too. As somebody who works in the crazy New HampshireSpeakers Office and legislature, i am looking ahead. Were seeing more talk about redistricting and how these folks are elected. New hampshire has these wonderful districts that help make the elections very swingy. And they also as we have seen over the last six or eight years, produced Sexual Assault winners that they win seats and hold seats. The boston bombing defender that held a seat. It was a, she was a state rep, seriously. And that guy who was the go to veteran advocate are we doing anything to educate people to do the data, to look at what a 400member legislative body should be looking like electorally before we get there . That law is going to have to get through that chamber if its going to be changed. David nir so the question is about New Hampshires state house which is one of the craziest state legislative chamber in the country. Just to put it in context, it has 400 members based on New Hampshires population. If the u. S. Congress had the same ratio of population to members we would have 96,000 , members of congress. [laughter] paid 100 a year. David nir paid 100 a year. Actually i think i like that idea. So the question i or the general topic i think, how do we educate people you know for such small races . How do we avoid electing all these truly awful people . New hampshire is a Real Laboratory for that. Any takers on that . Carolyn fiddler i think it is fair to say it is definitely fair to say, New Hampshire is unique. It was so few voters in each district and such a sort of low rate of return for your Office Holder in term of building a career in electoral politics, being a member of the New Hampshire state house. There are so many of them. So i think its partially about education. It is partially about the sort of folks who step up to run year , and there is also a fairly high rate of turnover in the house in New Hampshire. Having to find new folks to step forward and make that Time Commitment and make the commitment to run. Even in the small districts running for office is not easy. ,it is not just about Voter Education, it is also about recruitment. Having good democrats in these districts against these crazy republicans, is going to help keep crazy republicans out of office as much as Voter Education is. Im glad that New Hampshire is special. [laughter] one thing i want to add about New Hampshire, this is a place where the districts are small. The candidates can pretty much meet all of the voters or certainly a huge chunk. It might seem like, you should really try hard to win these seats. Here is something that really is crazy. In 2006, we had democratic wave, the New Hampshire legislature, the democrats took control of both houses for the First Time Since the 1870s. All republican incumbents that lost their seats, they were not in New Hampshire that not. They were on vacation. You cant take your election for granted more than going on vacation on election night. So when i say you should really try hard, some of these people win, and they dont try hard. One other thing i would add. More broadly they get paid 100 , a year. Like you get the quality of the legislature that you pay for. And i think thats something weve seen in state legislatures and beyond that, when officials are paid not like fulltime officials, you dont get quality people. They cant afford to. You end up with people who are independently wealthy. You end up with people who can afford to take this time and effort into running, winning, then doing the legislative work. Theyre not getting any income for it. When you have 400 people in a small state, and you are not paying them anything, youll end up with bad apples. There is only so much to be about that without changing how much you value your state legislature. And its not a popular stand to always take because nobody likes the idea of elected officials going out and like making a whole bunch of money off of being a state official. They need to if its a serious job, they need to be paid like a serious person. 100 a year is not really one. David nir i will take a question from the internet here, from bill hartsburg are. What is your take on maine [laughter] yes, bill, if you run. Im sorry. I think he is vulnerable by virtue of being a close swing district. And also i think our special Election Results i think we are seeing a lot of snapback from whiter, lower educated district like maine 2nd. I think the special Election Results are showing us that would these voters are not permanently lost to the trumpish version of the gop. They are having second thoughts. That would be my main concern if we can getnd, the voters back and we can based on legislative results we are seeing. Maines 2nd is an on district. It includes the rural portion of maine north of portland. It was in democratic hands for a long time until 2014 wave. The weasel won the surprise. The crazy governor was granted victory also. While trump was carrying his district by 10 points. They shifted from obama by nine point to trump by 10 points. Some of these rural areas are shifting back. Terms his first term he kept his head down. More trumpng into things in a should be. Hes not answering questions about trumpcare very well at all. There are some candidates we do have some good races in the rural parts of the district. Its one of those areas and a good year it could definitely shift back. Maine does tend to reelect republican incumbents. He did a good job presenting himself that way. Some of this is beginning to come off. The disguise is coming off on him. I think this is a winnable district. Next question. This is a chance for you to talk about turnout. My name is doug glen doug linney, we work to flip over 14 congressional seats. Our primary strategy is turnout. The difference between president ial turnout, midterm turnout could be as 25 to 35 . If you tighten that up, the usual midterm turnout in a lot of these seats and you closer to the search we have seen and the special elections. With think at least 12 or 14 seats are within reach. I would be interested in your thoughts on that particular formulation. The question is, what is the the of turnout, shrinking turnout gap between midterms and general elections and what kind of focus or importance that plays in Going Forward into 2018 . California, because of the top two binaries is very primaries, is possible for the Gubernatorial Race will be democrats. We also have an opportunity that way that will lower turnout, lower the republican turnout. Turnout is a very broad topic. I guess it is a little bit difficult to address. I will look at it through 6thific lens, the georgia race that im sure everyone pay a lot of attention to. Ossoff set a jon record for democratic turnout in a special election. Problem was republicans also set a record. This touches on some other questions that we have answered before. I think david beard was talking about this in particular. That wound up that race did not work out for us precisely because it was such a republican district. I think there are so many the thing that got lost with wednesday morning quarterbacking was that there are so many seats that are bluer then georgia 6th, including a lot of california districts you mentioned. In 2018, if we have the same kind of turnout surge, even if republicans also have a turnout surge, our surge is bigger. There are many seats that will come into play. I think the trial results in the georgia 6th were very close. That had a lot of people thinking it is a swing district. It really wasnt, that there are a lot of swingy districts out there. If this enthusiasm keeps up and donald trump keeps being donald trump, which he certainly will of i think that we can sort keep leapfrogging the republicans on the turn outside. Dublin the good things for us, particularly in the house. I would just add it important to think about three broad buckets. Democratic voters who may or may not turn out, swing voters who may vote for either side, and Republican Voters who may or may not turn out. I think it is true you could see some problems with republican turnout from their point of view problems because if they dont end up with a republican editorial candidate governor vittorio gubernatorial candidate, you have no youetitive senate race, could see problems with the republican turnout but its outside of our control. If that happens, ok. If not, i think we need to be we should focus on getting our turnout as best as it can be. Probably not going to be all the way president ial level, but the closer we can get the better. And going after any swing voters in these districts. Republican vote will be with the republican vote is. It is outside of our control. There is a question from online. The question is, what are your models telling you about 2018 for the house and senate . 2014, we rand in pollingbased models to try to forecast the outcome of the elections. On the president ial side we, along with everyone else were incorrect in our predictions. On the senate side the polls were quite accurate. There were not really any upsets in the senate races. There is not enough data on the house side for us to do not enough polling data to model house races and its too early in the cycle. We dont know who the candidates are. I think we can sort of answer more broadly what we see happening in 2018. One thing you can do is look at the generic house ballot, which by itself is kind of vague. And asks who you wants to see in charge of the house next year. You can plug it we dont have her on model. Polly tsai professor alan polisciz has professor Alan Abramowitz has a model. At least a 30 point gain in the house, which as you probably know is enough to flip it. A 30seat gain. Is, marthastion stewart precedents really applicable . This is probably the most rigid gerrymandered map we have seen with a democratic wave coming in. It is a question of how high is the levy . Really cant really say with certainty because there is not much historical precedent for not. That we may not have a model, that we have been noticing numbers coming in that are extremely favorable as far as the number of candidates who have already declared for house races and the amount of money they are raising. These house races are not even set yet. We will take a look at these numbers later on, many third or Fourth Quarter when things are settled and we have a better idea of who is running where. Together with the special election i mentioned before are off the charts compared anything we have seen in this century. Since 2004, 2002, although i have not finished 2002 numbers. Is looking good right now. Had the Midterm Election this year, i would be really excited. But a lot can happen in the next year. Thanthink it is even more we always say a lot can happen in the next year, public this guy in the white house, much more than a locket happen in the next year. It could get a lot worse for them or there are scenarios where a gets better for them. I think the volatility is much higher and we have never encountered before. Probably since the 1860s. Next question. My name is peter, im from boston. Im here with my family, including my teenage son. [applause] thank you. We are not political but we hold resistance meetings once a month to keep our sanity. I have a question about the special election and hoping to tap on your expertise. We watched montana, South Carolina, georgia. Disappointed but understanding the trends were favorable. What is your opinion about whether these candidates that came close but did not win, sure they run again as rematches during the general election or do you have data to suggest its probably time for a different candidate to compete . I dont know the answer but i would be interested to hear your responses. Sure. The question is, that candidates who ran in the carri various congressional elections, should they run again or whether democrats should look to new options . Think it is not super clear. Four notableof the ones is its own scenario. There is not a lot of great history of special election winners losing at the next general election. Somebody once wins, they get the benefit of the doubt for their first general election. They have not been in office that long. Memories of special elections are still in peoples heads so they tend to vote however they voted in the special. A candidate we separate them. Kansas 4 and the South Carolina race, those are tough districts. I think both of our candidates ran credible campaigns, as credible as you can do in such a tough, deep red district. If they wanted to run again, i think they would get a big benefit of the doubt. Also because they are probably not a lot of candidates raring to go better deep red. Ith montana and georgia 6th, dont think there is anything inherent against the candidate running again. Money, ranse reasonably close, if that is something we decide to do, i dont think there is anything wrong with it. I think is a potentially winnable races. If there are other candidates are also strong, i dont think theres anything wrong with that happening in a primary. [indiscernible] and [indiscernible] and whatin large of the oklahoma special elections, the candidate who lost in the 2016 election won the 2017 special election. I think thats a reflection of the changing political types that were in. You can look at how poorly democrats were doing in all the special elections previously leading up to and on election day in 2016. Since then you have seen a big shift from as trump got into office towards democrats. I think thats a shifting political wind but i think its a little different going from a general to a special which is a lot more volatile than from a special to the general, if that makes sense. Next question. I apologize if this has come up already. I want to talk about the midwest and get your thoughts specifically on the Senate Prospects we have in wisconsin and ohio and michigan and pennsylvania considering what happened last year where he you think the races stand. Also given most of those senators are pretty wellliked and have varying degrees of competition. I think we can debate about that for a while. And they are all key governors race states as well. I would just love your thoughts on those states. What we see happening in a Key Senate Races were Democratic Senators in the midwestern states, many of which were most of which were won by trump, have we think they will be faring in 2018 . These are states that trump narrowly won. In a midterm year if things are going a bit against the white house like they usually are, i think we should be ok. That said, weird things can happen in individual races. Republicans dont seem to have toptier candidates in any of them. In michigan we might get as the republican candidate. Is absurd and it might not happen, but look where we are now. That said, he is probably not the type of person that republican strategists are dreaming of. Casey, theania, bob democratic incumbent is wellliked. He has won decisively twice. Pennsylvania did nearly go for trumpet that was so narrow so repair begins republicans dont have much room for error. Their candidate is lou barletta. Pretrumpcally the pennsylvania. Hazelton, small town, he passed all these antiimmigrant measures. It was pretty bad. He is basically volunteering to test whether the trump model can work in pennsylvania for people who are not trump in 2016. I doubt it will but we will see. Me as someone the white house likes so he can probably raise a lot of money. If trump, if his Approval Ratings are looking like they are now, people are not going to be wanting a mini trump. As for the other races, i dont want to hog it all. Give wisconsin we have kevin nicholson, a veteran. He has some rich money backers. He was the head of the College Democrats of america in 2000. There are some speeches of him praising al gore at the Democratic Convention that year. He did say i was a democrat and look how smart i am now. We will see what happens there. There are other republicans talking about running but nobody really toptier. I love your impersonation of a republican meathead. [laughter] does northf hands, dakota count as the midwest or the great plains . If you are midwest, raise your hands. Great plains . We will skip heidi heitkamp. Next question. One of theis lala, cofounders of the sister district project. Beare super excited to playing in a bunch of virginia races this year. Aside from the surge in excitement and national interest, which is obviously super awesome in the state legislative and down ballot races, are there any other trends that are promising in 2018, and or are there any trends you are looking down the line that are you are that you are concerned about . What other trends are we looking at for the elections in 2017 and 2018 . You mentioned the excitement in virginia. That is a real thing this year. Is not just the excitement among the electorate. We have seen the manifest and down ballot special elections across the country, but folks stepping up to run. Running for office is hard. Yet to raise money, knock on doors. It is not a cakewalk and it is not fun. It is it rude awakening for some of these folks who decided they wanted to run for office, but they hung in there and kept running. This dramatic uptick in folks stepping up to run in virginia is already happening in races across the country. That is another really positive indicator that shocked me this year in virginia, pleasantly so. It is a sub issue of that. The number of women stepping forward to run this year is historic and virginia. In virginia. I think he will continue to see that in state legislators and state race recruitment across the country. More than half of the challengers taking on republicans in state house delegates in virginia are women. It is truly remarkable. I look forward to that trend continuing and i think it will. Nothing this administration has done or the republicans have done as they held the reins of power have helped women. The state legislators attacks on women have an ongoing since republicans swept into power in 2010. I think women who are already active in their communities are stepping up and taking that next crucial difficult step of running for office. I think that will continue. And point to fundraising that the good indicator of where we are right now. In the last quarter seeing a lot of people who have run for office before who are in the kind of expensive media markets, suburban districts pulling in 400,000 or 500,000 quarters despite not having Health Office and built preexisting networks. That in itself is a good indicator. I know we all went to get money out or less in politics, but we are playing on existing rules right now. That is extremely important to raise the early money. It is good to see a lot of candidates running in these districts that we have not feel that a serious democratic candidate in a long time. The Orange County district, georgia 7th north of us here, that district has barely been getting any attention for a long time. That said there are district where we dont have really notable candidates yet. Pennsylvania 8th, the philly suburbs, that was close with romney and trump. I dont want to say it is sunshine and rainbows. That our district where we still need people, but it is a good trend to see people running credible campaigns and a lot of these districts and other night board forever. That have been ignored forever. From any website called project435. Com, the number of seats in the house, and they have looked at how Many Democrats and republicans have filed with the fec to run for the house. Filing paperwork is not necessarily mean you will run, but its a necessary first step. There are 241 republican held seats in the house. Of those, we have Democratic Candidates who have filed in 191. Of them 79 of all republican held seats. 50 left we still need candidates. Is only august 2017. Democrats only have 194 seats in the house, and republicans have only filed in 62 of those districts. Just 32 . Aggregate those numbers show where the enthusiasm why. It is not just our perception, the hard numbers really back it up. Thank you. Follow up to the gerrymandering question. Do you know which states we can get a ballot measure, to do like the california did and get an independent commission to decide the lines . Which do we have to basically vote out a governor or legislatures to get that changed . Great question. In which state can citizens put a ballot measure on the ballot to require independent redistricting versus which states were you actually have to vote out the republican who voted democrat . The latter group is much bigger than the former. Stephen wolf, also a member of our team, he has done a lot of work on this. I wish you were here right now to answer this question. The number of states where we can develop measures is small. Anyone . Ohio would be an example, and michigan are heavily gerrymandered states where the process is allowed. An important point to make is most of the states, especially the most gerrymandering state, may have already been attempted sometimes multiple times. Regardless of whether or not the ballot measure remedy is available, i think it is not something to be relied on. Putting on republicans in the state register and the Governors Office state legislature and the Governors Office is a more reliable way, and would help a whole host of other issues like Voting Rights and reproductive choice and things like that. Addhis is one for i will sometimes the democratic incumbents in leaders. Some democrats would rather have stayed seats in the minority forever then risking their seat to get a majority. We have seen in ohio were doing 20112012, democrats did sabotage attempts to get this on the ballot or we can it weaken it. In pennsylvania you had some Party Leaders work with republicans to draw up the districts. They wanted their safe districts. This is a worthwhile endeavor, but you might need that anyone who does this will have to work from the democratic establishment in those states. At least not rely on them. That is something we definitely can be aware of. Map pulled up stephens where this is possible. The total number of states where this could happen is eight states where you could get a ballot measure on to create an independent redistricting emission. Commission. Most are very small. While a lot might be a win for good government, as a partisan matter putting a ballot measure on in arkansas or mississippi which only have four Congressional Districts apiece, that is not necessarily a good use of resources. That they two the big two will be michigan and ohio. I believe a group in ohio is trying this. Florida is also a possibility. They did pass something they call their fair district amendments to the state constitution a number of years ago. The problem is that the Legislature Still have the power to draw districts and it just creates restrictions on what they are allowed to do. The problem is this is what republicans do when they say the when they are told they cant do something. They do it anyway and way to get sued. This is happened over and over in North Carolina and texas. That had tons of napster and above the courts this year. Great. The courts are on our side. The problem is we spent years and years and years with republicans winning elections under these illegal gerrymandered lines. In florida, given be great to have a proper independent redistricting commission. There is probably not an appetite for that anymore there. And you need 60 for a measure to pass, notches 50 . I think probably focusing on elections is really the better place to focus. We only have a couple of minutes left. Going to take questions real quick. Would it be ok if we took the question behind you . You have not gone. You guys built great tools. Under previous versions they were much more accessible to get to. Is anywhere to be dynamic is more accessible for people trying to figure out what they and therun for Office Details of figaro that cap stuff . The question is about the available, being more visible and prominent on the site. Yes, we are working hard to bring those back. Last year, the day after the we thought we had to take that down right away. Unfortunately that met all the links to data tools and stuff jeff and worked on and others weked on, really everyone, will be bringing those back just as soon as we can. Last question. Running for the medassets house of are presented as in new jerseys 4th district. Im running against congressman noshow smith. He has not lived in our states in 1983. Is lived in virginia for so long his kids get in a tuition virginia schools. He has not held an open public town hall meeting in our district in 25 years. Retire thisor us to 37 year incumbent. The district leans republican with a pbi rating of our plus seven. Democrats,000 148,000 republicans. 200,000 plus unaffiliated voters were there is room for organizing and ending this district. Have you done any analysis on new jerseys 4th and can you please share it with me . [laughter] the question is have a gun analysis on new jerseys 4th Congressional District. The answer is we probably arty have shared already have shared domain analysis we have done, the president ial th results by district. Donald trump won it 56 . It was a little closer four years earlier when mitt romney won it 54 to 45 for barack obama in 2012. What we will also be doing once jeff is finished with this beast of a project tackling president ial results for these thousands and thousands of legislative districts, we will go back and look at the other statewide races that took place in 2016 and break those down along the lines for congressional legislative districts. That would include senate races, governors races, and so forth. We will also do the 2017 new jersey gubernatorial election. That data, i would say expect to happen before election day. [laughter] thank you. Thank you everyone so much for coming. Thanks to all the staff here for Live Streaming us. And thanks to the artist capturing us in posterboard form. [applause] cspans washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up monday morning, Arms Control Association executive director Daryl Kimball talks about recent advances in north Koreas Nuclear capability. Than getting in road, editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, discusses developments in the u. S. Standoff with north korea. And president trumps relationship with traditional u. S. Allies. Author paul brandon on the cost of renovation to the white house. Plus the cost of operating the executive mansion. Be sure to watch cspans washington journal, live at 7 00 eastern monday morning. In