Cspan is your unfiltered view of government, we are filtered by these Television Companies and more including comcast. Its way more than a community center. Comcast is is partnering with 1000 Community Centers so that families can have the tools that they need to do anything. Comcast supports cspan as a public service, giving you a front row seat to democracy. Host welcome back. To washington journal, its our weekly spotlight on the podcast segment and im joined by the cohosts of the down ballot podcast, david nir on zoom. He is daily post Political Editor and he is an elections publisher and david beard is the daily kos contributing editor. Welcome. Thanks for having us. Host you can join the conversation on our lines by party affiliation. Republicans, 202 7488001. Democrats, 202 7488000. And independents, 202 7488002. David near nir, you are the politics director at the daily coast. Remind viewers what it is. And its point of view. Guest it is the Largest OnlineProgressive Community in the country. We celebrated our 20th anniversary this year and we are dedicated to what we like to call news, community, and action. We want to give progressives, liberals, and democrats a place to read about the news and then also do something with it to take action to affect positive change in this country. The coverage that david beard and i are involved in is focused on elections and as beard will talk about, down ballot elections, the races below the level of the presidency that never get as much attention as they deserve. Host david beard, tell us about that. The podcast, why you are deciding to focus on the down ballot. Guest the presidency gets an enormous amount of coverage, particularly relative to other races. We have thousands of races that take place. Senate and house are further down ballot, mayors, city council, and our goal is to focus on those to provide good analysis, the best way for progressives to volunteer, use their donations, but also understand whats going on. Donations, but also understand whats going on. There are so many different races people dont know about when you talk about judgeships or things like that. People might not be familiar with whats on the ballot. Host tell me about the podcast. Whats the format, who do you talk to . Guest there is two main segments, a weekly segment between myself and david nir. We go back and forth with a few of the top hits of the past week, anything we found interesting or notable or worth talking about. Then we move into what we call a deep dive which is usually an interview with a guest. Occasionally we will do something else, but most of the time we have somebody on. We do not have a lot of elected officials. It primarily is folks like analysts or folks working with an organization on behalf of certain races, that can give an insight view on politics campaigns and whats going on in these races we are covering. Host david nir, you talked about progressives paper and i wonder if that is your target audience or if you are trying to reach a wider audience . Guest progressives have always been our first and foremost audience but it is interesting that you ask. We have always been devoted to being a realitybased community and that means that if the news is tough for democrats or if honestly, it is good for republicans, we are going to be honest because telling people to clap harder does not allow them to create change. You have to be honest and candid and straightforward with your readers. We know that votes from all over the spectrum follow our podcast and we produce a lot of content, including a lot of Data Analysis that is of great interest regardless of political leanings. Daily coast, our primary mission has always been and will be to support progressives. We like to say we want to elect more and better democrats and thats going to be at the core of what we do. Host david beard, talk specifically about the down ballot races. There is state attorney general, secretary of state, state Supreme Court. Talk about the importance of each. Guest all of those positions have real impact on peoples lives in their respective states in ways they may not initially think about or expect. Obviously, weve seen recently with state Supreme Court that a number of states elect their justices on Election Integrity to abortion to voters rights and workers rights. Theres a ton of Different Things the Supreme Court has decisionmaking power on because state law doesnt normally go to the federal judiciary system. They stop at the state Supreme Court. Who is elected has an enormous impact on those issues. As weve seen with secretary of state and attorney general, the move in recent years to push conspiracy theories around elections and try to impugn the integrity of our elections, it is very important to have elected officials who are willing to push back and stand up for the elections weve taken, and to show they are being run appropriately in these conspiracy theories have no basis, and to keep conspiracy theorists out. Thats what and a lot of these states and races, somebody is going to run an election well or push baseless conspiracy theories about elections they run. Host going to put something on the screen. These are 2022 municipal elections an here are some of the offices atre up. District attorney is kind of understandable,uthen there is the corner, them a more roner, the boreal district board, abatement board. Memorial district board, abatement board. How do people know what this is . Guest it is difficult. We just had an episode of somebody running for school board and a nonpartisan area. They were asking how do people make these decisions about who to vote for . It is difficult particularly with the types of offices that you mentioned where i dont feel educated enough to know who the best coroner might be. Sometimes you will find partisan cues. If there is a partisanship, people will vote for the democrat or republican and often times incumbency is very strong. You got elected, people just vote for you as long as you are on the ballot. Host at least you have experience. Guest they havent heard of anything going wrong at the coroners office. Host nobody died. Guest it is hard, but people dont know what they do. It is sort of an unknown. People tend to vote whoever is at the top of the ballot or whichever name they are more familiar with. Weve seen studies that show people with names, irish names have done well in a state like ohio, and offices are people havent had any cues. Host what about candidates for municipal offices running unopposed . How often does that happen and what does that say about the position and availability of choices . Guest it happens distressingly often. I think this may be a somewhat unusual view but it is quite possible that in america we actually elect too many offices. We were talking just a moment ago about judicial elections. The rest of the world thinks we are co head says that even if they buck historical trends there is another cause on the left, emma kratz have a roll off problem. First, describe but roloff is and why does it seem to be a whichever wants to take that i am happy to take that one. Midterm term out, the number of mid voters that turn up in midterm elections is always much lower than in a president ial election. This is a very unusual feature of american politics. Most countries dont have midterm elections. They just have one every few years. For many years, democratic turnout in these midterm elections has tended to be disproportionately lower than republican turnout in large part because the kind of voters who tend to show up for these less prominent elections are better educated and more welloff, more affluent, and much of the Democratic Coalition tend to be younger voters, people of color, and these are folks who just havent had as long a participant patient participation in our political system. Voting is a habit. The kind of people who tend to vote more often, older voters especially, have in recent years favored republicans. Republicans have typically done better in terms of turnout. They have lost fewer voters than democrats. However, i want to stress that this has been changing in the trump years. The Democratic Coalition has become more affluent and better educated as these former Republican Voters in they in these suburban areas have moved away from the gop during the trump era and beyond. This election will be an interesting test case but this issue will start to mitigate itself somewhat as the nature of the Democratic Base changes. Host david beard, talk about split tickets. How often does that happen . Does it happen more often for democrats or republicans . Guest it used to be mark a lot more common, particularly in the middle of the century. People were more willing to vote for a liberal republican or conservative democrat across the country. We saw that increase. There were a lot of competitive races and ideological mixing, where the most liberal or conservative house member was not necessarily a democrat or republican. That his decreased as partisanship has become stronger and ideology has caused more sorting between democrats and republicans, as a result there is still some ticket splitting. Weve seen with governors races, we have seen republicans elected joined me as we invoke the presence of our lord