Traffic has been growing on the LDI steadily since this project started, and I am incredibly proud of the product I have put out thus far, which is precisely why I find myself at a bit of an impasse. As of today, I have released indexes for virtually every state that releases easily accessible precinct-level election data, and has been doing so for the past decade.
Unfortunately, that is around 20% of the states, which is not nearly as much as I would like to have complete. But without financial support from anywhere, I struggle not only to afford the time investment it takes to compile this data, but in many cases, I cannot afford to purchase election results from a company like PoliData. With school soon occupying my full-time attention, the opportunity for me to continue to publish new states at the rate I have over the past few months is quickly drying up.
With all that said, this site is far from dead. The fact remains that there are few good places to find electoral analysis and insight for state legislatures. DailyKos Elections and Red Racing Horses both offer far much more in coverage than traditional media outlets have, but both sides are burdened with also covering Congressional and Presidential campaigns, and so one cannot expect to see state legislative elections getting the red carpet treatment.
At my core, I believe state legislatures are the most important battleground for progressive policy - they are the real opportunities for us to innovate, and just as importantly, they present easy opportunities for conservatives to derail this country's progress with regressive policies like the ones we have seen in Wisconsin. They deserve our full attention, and if I can be a place where they receive that kind of coverage, then I want to do everything to make sure I do it right.
So, here's an outline of what to expect from this website as we go forward:
1.) Increased coverage of state legislative elections - profiling legislators and candidates who deserve a platform, providing analysis of general and special elections, results liveblogs, and election wrap-ups.
2.) Continued updates for the states that have all ready been released - as more data comes out regarding redistricting, I'll compile indexes for the new legislative districts in the states we have covered, and update scores after each state goes to the polls.
3.) New states - there are still states (Michigan) that I am working on, as well as others where I have close to all the information I need to publish them. But by prioritizing the above two goals, I can ensure that I'm not releasing states where I am not 100% confident in the numbers I put out, which I think is better for me and better for my readers.
This all starts this week, as tomorrow presents us with one of the most-followed state legislative races I can recall.
Tomorrow night, Wisconsin voters will go the polls in a recall election for six Republican state senators - a week later, two Democratic state senators will face the same test. Democrats need a net gain of three seats in these races in order to flip control of the Senate, and significantly halt the damage Wisconsin Governor Scott Brown has done to the state. But as I have said in past Wisconsin updates, that road forward is not easy - four of the six Republicans on the block are in districts that Republicans are expected to safely win in generic elections.
But this election is anything but generic, and so tomorrow night I'll be updating everyone with data as it comes in. We'll be comparing Democratic performance to the Wisconsin LDI's expectations in every district, trying to measure the size of the anti-Walker wave and what it means for each election so that we can predict the results a little sooner than some of the traditional media outlets.
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