This is a lightly edited transcript of the October 14 edition of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch the video here or by following this show on YouTube or Substack.
Perry Bacon: Hi, I’m Perry Bacon. I’m joined by Chaz Nuttycombe. He’s the executive director of State Navigate, which does a lot of interesting work analyzing state legislators and the races going on there. They have a lot of polling and a lot of projections and a lot of data about an underappreciated part of our system, which is state politics and how important they are. So Chaz, welcome. Thanks for joining me.
Chaz Nuttycombe: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Bacon: So I think you guys do estimates the way a lot of forecasts do, the way that people know about Nate Silver and G. Elliott Morris. But you’ve done those things at the state level instead. So if I read this correctly, you’re projecting that Democrats across the country will gain about 400 seats in the state legislatures. Is that correct?
Nuttycombe: 410 right now, yeah.
Bacon: 410. So is that an unusually large number? Is that a small number? Is there any kind of comparison there? So 410 across the country, that seems like a big number. About how many state legislators are there in the country overall?
Nuttycombe: I think it’s 7,400 total. There are 6,152 up this year, although I think we’re missing like maybe five special elections that we don’t have in here. And those are in chambers like South Carolina Senate, New Mexico Senate, Kansas Senate, which are only happening presidentials. Maybe Louisiana and Mississippi Legislature too.
They think they’re all safe, although I know Mississippi has something coming up. I want to say they have special elections because of redistricting, so actually I should check on that.
Bacon: In other words, there’s a blue wave coming in. It’s also hitting state legislatures is what I think the broad story is here.
Nuttycombe: Yeah. 2018, the Democrats gained, I believe Ballotpedia’s count is like 308 or 309.
Bacon: Okay. So it’s going to be even bigger than that.
Nuttycombe: Yeah, a little bit bigger. Our forecasts, though, are plugged into a D plus 8.4 national environment right now. That’s based on our fundamentals modeling, which includes stuff like, of course, presidential approval and all that jazz. And then, of course, polling. Polling is about like 60 percent of that environmental estimate, and then the fundamentals are about like 40, if I recall correctly.
And waves move, especially in midterms, unevenly. As we, for anybody who remembers 2022, right? With maybe results in somewhere like Florida or New York compared to Michigan or Minnesota. So some of our states where Democrats are doing pretty well—and it’s very hard, it’s like an art and a science, I think, at the state legislative level, and I’ll get into that in a sec. But I would say with a D plus 8.4 environment, I’m surprised how well Democrats are doing in somewhere like New Hampshire and Washington.
And inversely, I think that they’re probably doing better compared to what our forecasts have at the state legislative level, I’m talking here, in Texas and Georgia. That’s just my take, though. The data is the data.
Bacon: Sorry, they’re doing better in Texas and Georgia, or worse, compared to the national? Say it again.
Nuttycombe: I think that they’re probably going to do better in Texas and Georgia than what we have in our state legislative forecast there. So that’s my hot take, and a little bit of that is based on polling and what we’ve seen particularly in regional polling, and some problems, I would say, especially in Georgia, in terms of the statewide polling there.
Bacon: Are these 400 seats pretty geographically distributed, or are there some regions or states that we should typically focus on where there are going to be big gains?
Nuttycombe: So that’s a good question. So the biggest ones—I’ve got our national forecasting here. I’m looking at coalition shifts, and this should be organized, I believe, by percentage change in the legislature. So New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Arizona, Washington, expected pretty big changes there. Minnesota, Maine, Hawaii.
Smallest changes would be, it looks like, Wyoming, Nevada, pretty gerrymandered states and really not much competitive. And also Wyoming is gerrymandered, but it’s still deep red. Alabama, Rhode Island, Maryland. And then Georgia’s also on the bottom, which, so I do think we’re undershooting there, but we’ll see. So those are the smallest ones in terms of change.
The Republicans, it looks like the only state where they’re making gains in our forecast is North Dakota.
Bacon: What was that count like?
Nuttycombe: Maybe three seats in the North Dakota House. So that’s what we got.
Bacon: So currently, Ballotpedia estimates about 39 percent of Americans live in a Democratic trifecta and about 42 percent live in a Republican trifecta. Trifecta, if people don’t know, is when one party controls both the state legislature and the governor’s office. That’s where you can really do policy. Like Texas and Georgia, and most of the South, are red trifectas. A lot of states on the coast are blue trifectas.
And you guys are estimating, if I’m reading this well, that right now it’s about 40/40, but you’re estimating that if this election goes the way you think it’s going to go, about 49 percent of Americans, almost half, will live in a Democratic trifecta, and only about 31 percent—so a big retrenchment in the Republican trifectas. Correct?
Nuttycombe: Correct. Yeah. And what’s big is, and I know Nate Silver is doing the same thing here, two-thirds of Americans are projected to have a Democratic governor right now, if our forecast holds up. And I don’t know what the percentage is for this currently.
We could probably calculate it for how many are represented by a Democrat on the state house level or a Republican, but we have 55 percent of Americans being represented by Democrats on the state house level. It’s lower on the state Senate, 52 percent projected, with 48 percent projected Republican.
Why is that difference there? State senates are like the US Senate. The vast majority have staggered terms, so only half of state senate seats thereabouts are up every two years. And there’s also a small percentage that’s only up every four years, next year in Virginia, New Jersey, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
Perry Bacon: 49 percent projected in Democratic trifectas, 30, 31 percent Republican. So a big shift potentially coming. So let’s dig into that a little bit, because there were some numbers in terms of the states.
So you seem like you’re estimating—states people follow a lot, Minnesota, Michigan, Arizona, are states you’re projecting. I think all those places are places where the legislature is currently not Democratic, but might be.
A lot of things we’re seeing are potentially states with Democratic governors where one house is Democratic and now the other might be. That’s Minnesota, Michigan, and Arizona, right?
Nuttycombe: Not Arizona. Arizona, both chambers are Republican.
Bacon: Oh, okay. So they might have two flips. Interesting.
Nuttycombe: Michigan and Minnesota, the state senates, which have not been up since 2022, are held by Democrats. They’re up this year. And there is a tied chamber in the Minnesota State House. It’s the only tied chamber in the country as far as I know. And Michigan State House flipped from Democrat to Republican in 2024.
So in terms of the most likely states to have a trifecta created, Minnesota with a 94 percent chance of a Dem trifecta this year, Kansas with 81 percent—
Bacon: Kansas will become Republican, just to let people know. Currently they have Laura Kelly, the governor, who’s done a good job winning two terms, but a Republican’s likely to win this. That’s unusual this year, to have a state become Republican. Go ahead.
Nuttycombe: Yeah. And then Alaska is the second most likely Democratic trifecta. But put an asterisk there, because it’s a de facto Democratic trifecta, because Alaska is very unique in that both of its state legislative chambers have a coalition of Democrats, independents, nonpartisans, and a couple of Republicans.
So the Alaska state senate is pretty much not competitive. The coalition will hold it. And then the state house, the coalition is probably going to expand their majority by maybe one to three seats. I think that’s what we have right now.
So the big thing there is just, Dunleavy is not really on the side of the coalition. He’s out of office this year. Democrats are heavy favorites to win the governor race in Alaska this year because there’s three Republicans on the ballot. One of them is not really pro-team RCV, so they’re not really telling their candidates to rank, as far as I remember, unless that has changed in the last few weeks.
Everyone’s talking about what Silver has, and maybe not as much what we have, because our forecasts are behind a paywall. But yeah, to say lean Democratic would be generous to the Republicans in the Alaska governor race. Really it’s pretty likely, at 80-something or maybe 90-something percent chance, that the Alaska Dems win the governor race this year.
Bacon: Let me jump to Wisconsin, which is a state that is very close in all elections. You have it almost at 50 percent exactly that it might become a trifecta or not. So talk about Wisconsin a little bit. This is a state where David Crowley is the favorite for governor, I assume, in your models, but it’s more a legislature question.
Nuttycombe: Yeah. No, actually. So we have the legislature as more likely, a little bit. Especially the state senate. Wisconsin State Senate is, I would say, probably next to the Minnesota State House, probably just under it, the most likely chamber to flip in the country.
Just because it’s a staggered state senate, they have redistricting, and there’s a whole bunch of seats up that are very likely to flip. And then the assembly is less likely, but it’s still, Dems are a little bit favored.
I think we’re undershooting Crowley here. I would like to see more polling of this race. But it looks like the average poll has Crowley between three and five. I think Crowley’s going to win by eight, frankly. But I don’t know, because I checked—State Navigate was the number one pollster for governor races in the country last year.
Bacon: You had some great polls, and then you had the Wisconsin primary poll. But anyway, yes.
Nuttycombe: Primaries are very different, and everyone was in the same boat there. And we saw this in, we did statewide polling in Utah where pretty much we got one candidate’s exact percentage right, but all the undecideds went in one direction. So when we talk about punditry and vibes and momentum, that actually matters a lot.
But anyway, what I was getting at is, pretty much I did the same methodology for what we had for figuring out what was the electorate going to be in Virginia last year, right? That got us being number one.
And I did it for Wisconsin for, pretty much in these states that don’t have party registration, what should party ID be? And Marquette has it literally right on the dot for what that estimate is supposed to be on party ID for Wisconsin. And Marquette had Crowley up by three.
So maybe it’s just Wisconsin being Wisconsin and the race is closer than what I think. And that polling has been to Wisconsin there this year. But we will see. Just my take, I think that Crowley—I would be surprised if the race was within five points, but that’s just—
Bacon: You also estimate—the one that jumped out at me was Pennsylvania, because I think of Josh Shapiro as being very popular, and I think that is correct, that he’s going to win by a lot. I assume Pennsylvania is going to become a trifecta too, but you all have it right at 50/50 too. So talk about why Shapiro’s numbers may not translate in state legislature.
Nuttycombe: Yeah. So the House is almost virtually safe Democratic. They won that chamber in 2022, and they held it in 2024. It was the only super competitive chamber that the Democrats held. They held it because of a conservative Democrat in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Frank Burns, who represents a Trump plus 30-something or 40-something district and won re-election by I think three points. But they’re going to expand their majority this year.
The state senate is the big thing. So Republicans have really strong incumbents in some of these competitive state legislative districts. We’re talking about their previous performances when they were state representatives were outrunning Biden by 10, 20-something points. And they didn’t really get contested in 2022. Now they are. Democrats also are defending a seat that they flipped in a special election.
But here’s the fun part. So we have polled all the competitive races in the Pennsylvania State Senate. We have our follow-up polls coming out tomorrow, which—I have some interesting stuff for when we talk about, I think, a problem in polling this year that’s under-discussed. Because these state senate districts are much larger than your congressional districts, or even state by district polls. So we’ve polled a lot of people in Pennsylvania, in the districts that decide the majority.
But anyway, so we did this one poll that—I put out an article, you can find it on our homepage on State Navigate, the top 20 most interesting, or strangest I should say, state legislative elections in the country. 10 are interesting and 10 are absolutely insane. And the number one most interesting race, I think, on the state legislative level this year is Pennsylvania State Senate District 46. It’s Southwest Pennsylvania. This is Conner Lamb territory.
Bacon: That’s like the Pittsburgh suburbs, right? Sort of Pittsburgh exurbs.
Nuttycombe: Yeah. Washington County, but also Greene County. And then a slight sliver of southern Beaver.
Bacon: For listeners who don’t know counties in Pennsylvania, I think we’re talking about outside of Pittsburgh, right?
Nuttycombe: Yeah, pretty much. On the border with the West Virginia panhandle.
Bacon: All right. That’s helpful. Thank you.
Nuttycombe: This district voted for Trump by 28 points, and I shouldn’t say the Democrats, because there’s an independent running against the Republican, and she is tied in our polling, which is really interesting. And the reason she’s tied—so to my knowledge, the same group running Dan Osborn in the US Senate is getting behind her. I don’t know what the group is called. But the reason why this race is tied, at least in our poll—
Bacon: Just to clarify for listeners, Dan Osborn is the person running in Nebraska who’s running as an independent, but is more left-leaning. He’s moderate, but he’s more of a Democrat, more left-leaning than conservative. He’s running as an independent to get away from the Democratic tag in a place where that’s unpopular. Go ahead.
Nuttycombe: Exactly. The reason this race is tied is because there was a brutal Republican primary, millions of dollars spent.
Bacon: Millions of dollars spent in a state legislative primary?
Nuttycombe: Yes. Gambling money, a lot of gambling money in that. Or gambling, gaming, whatever you want to call it.
So the incumbent is a normative conservative who got a primary from the MAGA right. And she only won re-election by six points in that primary, so it was very divisive, a lot of money spent hitting her. And so the conservative base is pissed off with her. So the independent is pulling a lot of Republican support.
And what’s interesting is, this was my favorite cross tab of the year, where we ask in all of our polls since we’ve done Wisconsin how people rate themselves ideologically, going from far right to Democratic socialist on a scale of one to 10, right? Where are you on a one to 10? And of all—so there’s center right, conservative, very conservative, extremely conservative, and far right for the right of center on this, right?
And the group where the independent is pulling best is with the far right. She’s getting a third of the far right vote. So it’s a really fascinating race, but that has changed the calculus of the Pennsylvania State Senate.
So that is the big thing this year, that pretty much the overall odds of a Democratic trifecta or whether it’s a divided government is a toss-up overall, when you include the odds in the governor race and the State House. So that’s going to be the thing. We have these Pennsylvania polls coming out tomorrow in three State Senate districts. All three of them are follow-up polls. And we will see.
The Democrats just need to gain two State Senate seats in order to have a tie, which would be broken by the lieutenant governor, although that’s not a very strong majority. I think with how the State Senate works is that they can’t—I forget what they can’t pass, but I think it’s revenue or something, or taxes. I don’t remember.
There’s some quirks like that that are on the state legislative level. But yeah. So Pennsylvania, toss-up on whether it’s a divided government or not. It’s all up to the State Senate, and we have those polls coming out tomorrow.
Perry Bacon: So one story is potentially a lot of Democratic trifectas being created. That’s one big story. The other story is about potentially Republicans losing trifectas. So you say in Iowa, that’s 93 percent chance—that’s essentially that Rob Sand is going to win the governorship. That’s the story there?
Nuttycombe: That combined—yeah, I would say mostly that.
Bacon: Ohio, you have 76 percent. Is that also mostly about Amy Acton as well?
Nuttycombe: Yeah.
Bacon: And then Georgia, 56 percent. That jumped out at me a little bit. I don’t perceive Keisha Lance Bottoms having much of a chance, but you do?
Nuttycombe: Yeah. So here’s the thing with Georgia this year. I think it has some of the worst polling in the country. Also with those odds, you have that slight chance that the Democrats could flip the Georgia House. But that’s extremely correlated with the governor result.
So polling overall in Georgia is only about—and this is for all polling throughout the year, keyword there—maybe like what, a point and a half at most, or maybe just a point to the left of 2024 in their recall. And that’s very unlikely to happen this year. And the other thing is, that’s the average throughout the year.
If I recall correctly, the average poll in Georgia, for at least those that asked about the governor race, is in line with 2024, or maybe actually a little bit to the right of 2024. The most ridiculous poll of Georgia is Mr. Big Data Polls’ poll, which I want to say was like 3.4 points to the right of 2024.
Bacon: Let me stop you there. I guess what I’m getting at might be, we do have a bunch of polls showing Ossoff running five to eight points ahead of his opponent, and it would make sense if Bottoms is not an incumbent, so she’s less popular. That makes sense.
There’s also the perception that she’s being outspent by a lot. So that’s why it would make sense to me that she lost, even if the polling was pretty good in an environment like that, because there might be candidate-specific factors here. Is that wrong?
Nuttycombe: Yeah. Ossoff is going to win by double digits. And the question is by what margin he wins by double digits. And I don’t think there’s enough ticket splitting typically in Georgia for that. What was the difference in 2022?
Bacon: So Warnock is like at 51, and Abrams is like 47, I think. Something like that.
Nuttycombe: Yeah. I think there was maybe an eight-point difference in 2022, maybe eight and a half on the high end. So Jackson would need more ticket splitting than what Kemp got as an incumbent.
And I don’t really buy that, especially the first day of early voting in Georgia, which, I don’t know, it’s one day, right? But the electorate looks like it’s going to be, in VoteHub’s estimate, three points to the left of 2024, or three point whatever. I don’t remember if it would round to four or not.
But yeah, the thing in Georgia is that the recalls in the polling in August and September through current—which are the only polls that have had that one to two-point Jackson lead, right—are just too conservative compared to what the actual Georgia electorate is going to look like this year.
We have a poll in Georgia that was done in July that I think was, on the recall and everything, probably too liberal. I think we had it being nine points to the left. When you look at Echelon, you look at Fox, I think they were five or six points to the left in recall of 2024. That would track, I think, with that. But those polls were in the spring, and those were similar to ours in what Bottoms led by, albeit, of course, maybe one or two points less, but still within—
Bacon: So this data here is like Brian Kemp in 2022 was at 53 percent and Stacey Abrams was 46 percent, so a seven-point win for the Republicans in that race. And then for Senate, Warnock was at 51 and Herschel Walker was at 49, so a two-point win for the Democrats. So just as a context, there wasn’t a ton of ticket splitting, but there appeared to be some.
Nuttycombe: Yeah. But the thing is, if Ossoff is at nine right now in the average, in polling that is definitely shooting conservative, he’s going to win by somewhere between 10 and 15 points. Is there enough ticket splitting?
Bacon: I’ll believe that when I see it, but anyway, in Georgia. But I get the point. The polling is what it is.
OK, so let’s move to Texas, where you have only a 34 percent chance the Democrats will break the trifecta. Talk about that. Does that mean the governor’s race in your guys’ view is probably leans Abbott?
Nuttycombe: Yeah. This is another one where I think maybe we’re undershooting the Dem. I haven’t dug much into the Texas polling, but some of these polls are just—I think like Quantus, for example, but I haven’t dug much into Quantus, was definitely too conservative. The one that came out that had Paxton plus one.
No, here’s my thing, is that I don’t think a lot of people are looking at what these electorates looked like in 2018. I think this is the problem. A lot of people are looking at 2024 or 2022. We talk about demographics, we talk about partisanship and everything, and I think that’s going to be a problem in Texas.
So the only two polls that I think are actually in the ballpark in looking at what the Texas electorate is looking like this year was that YouGov something project, I think it was a university, that came out today, which had Hinojosa up like one, right? And the New York Times/Siena. Everything else is pretty conservative, and so Hinojosa has a very narrow lead in those.
So I don’t know. Right now, in our forecast, Abbott’s a little bit of a favorite. But I’ve seen those 30-some percent chances happen, like they did in 2016, right, with Silver’s forecast with Trump. I’ve seen that happen all the time, especially as someone who looks at 6,000 state legislative races every two years. But I would say I think Hinojosa wins right now.
Bacon: So I have not taken these possibilities that seriously. If Hinojosa and Bottoms won, I know they’re just governors, they’re just two of 50, but those would be wins that I think in a cultural, political sense—we’ve never had a Black woman governor.
Those would be big wins in a certain way, and I think surprise people if those both happen. Are you saying those are not necessarily going to happen, but realistic chances on election day?
Nuttycombe: Absolutely realistic chances. I think those are the most probable. I would be surprised if at least one of those two didn’t.
Bacon: I’d be surprised if one of them didn’t win. Wow, OK.
Nuttycombe: Yeah. Now obviously Bottoms is the more likely one, right? As the forecast has. So I think probably one of them wins at least. Which, I guess this is the equivalent, right? When you think about 2018, where, same races, right? Texas US Senate 2018, the Democrats came up short there, and they came up short in the governor race in Georgia.
But I guess you switch out US Senate this year for Texas with governor in Texas, in terms of what is looking like more of a toss-up race or something. Because Paxton looks like he’s going to lose by mid-single margins, or maybe he keeps it within five. I think there’s a good argument for that.
Bacon: So this is like 2018, but potentially bigger than 2018, is the overall picture here. And is that because Trump is more unpopular?
Nuttycombe: Yeah. Let’s think about 2018 here for a minute. Because I can’t wrap my head around anybody who’s at this point in the game—a couple months ago, sure, absolutely, right? But I would tell them why I think this year is going to be larger and worse for Republicans than 2018.
What did Republicans have in 2018? What did Trump have in 2018? They had a great economy, right? You would hear that all the time. What do they not have? They don’t have a great economy. The inflation report just came out, and inflation is up. Gas is up. Stock market not really growing as much as it was in Trump’s first term.
And also there’s no big—I don’t think it is vibes. When we think about 2018, remember how Kavanaugh, I think Kavanaugh really polarized the electorate. I think that whole Kavanaugh debacle helped Republicans in states like Indiana and Missouri. They’re already going to win North Dakota, sure. But they don’t really have anything right now. And yeah, Trump’s approval is what, 10 points worse at this point compared to 2018?
Bacon: Low 30s versus low 40s. Mid-30s to mid-40s, yeah.
Nuttycombe: Yeah. And then with independents, I think Trump’s approval is at minus 50 with independents, I saw, whereas it was like minus six in 2018. So I can’t really wrap my head around anybody who thinks that this will be a year that is anything less, in terms of generic ballot controlling for uncontested, like a D plus eight year.
I think that’s the conservative estimate. I think the scenario on the tail end would be something like plus 14 for the Dems. I don’t think that’s likely.
But personally, I’m in the boat that I think it’s going to be somewhere between 10 and 12. Virginia early vote would definitely imply something like 11 or 12, or maybe conservatively, if Virginia does just trend pretty leftward relative to the nation, probably 10. But the average is, what, almost rounding to nine. I think that kind of tracks if the undecideds, like they did in Virginia last year, just break in one direction.
Bacon: So last question. There’s been some conventional wisdom looking at state races a little bit, that when you get to the Senate races, the Dems aren’t doing great in New Hampshire or Minnesota, the Senate races themselves.
So this idea that maybe the blue wave is strong in red states and weaker in blue states. Is that what you’re seeing, or are you saying there’s a blue wave pretty much everywhere?
Nuttycombe: So New York, yes. New York, Oregon, yeah, absolutely right. Why? Because they hate their governors. I think this is the thing about governors. Also Rhode Island, right? I think there has not been a time in the 21st century where Americans have hated their governors more.
People can talk about Morning Consult, but Morning Consult, I’m sorry, is a garbage pollster when it comes to these approval ratings and everything. They always overshoot, and they’re always so rosy. I’m sorry, but who did they have? I think they only had Kotek’s disapproval at minus one. That dogged on, right?
There could be as many as half of governors across the nation who are underwater in approval. And some of these, yes, are blue state governors, and also probably some of them are, like, Abbott. And why is that? I don’t know, because usually people like their governors. Some of that is dependent on state.
So to your point on, oh, this is not happening in blue states, there’s some truth to that. But also Vermont, Phil Scott has pissed off a lot of people.
Bacon: Phil Scott’s a Republican, oddly, in Vermont, just for people to know.
Nuttycombe: He won by 50 points in 2020—
Bacon: Yes, he used to be very popular, yes.
Nuttycombe: And our poll has him up three. And so what Phil Scott did is, he did this education reform bill that he signed. There was a big red wave in Vermont in 2024, because people were pissed off with this Democratic super majority. So Democrats don’t have a super majority there, so Scott does have veto power.
But Scott put through this education reform bill that I think consolidates rural schools and whatnot. So rural schools are closing. A lot of the rurals are pissed off. I don’t know. I know I’ve got a green flannel on, but I don’t follow Vermont politics all that well.
But when UNH had Scott down—I still think Scott wins. We’re not going to do a follow-up poll. Hopefully someone will have a poll toward the end here. The undecideds in our poll do not look like they like Scott. That was the problem for him.
Some of these governors just have had their own missteps, like Scott. Although he’s a Republican in a blue state, right? Oregon is ungovernable, so they will always have an unpopular Democratic governor, in just the way that they have structured their state government, frankly.
Some of these governors I think have done it to themselves. So that begs the question, what does Josh Shapiro do right? Is it just that he’s at all these events where he’s cutting ribbons and whatnot? Because Josh Shapiro is going to win re-election by 20 to 25 points in Pennsylvania this year, which is crazy. So I don’t know.
So I still believe that there is some truth to all politics is local. I do think things are becoming more national, and of course you can see that extrapolated if you do correlations on how many seats Democrats gain on the state level with generic ballot environment. There’s absolutely truth to that.
But there is still truth to all politics is local. Phil Scott should not be in a competitive race this year. He’s put himself in a competitive race. Or that Pennsylvania State Senate district is only competitive because of that rural Republican primary.
And that’s what I like about state government, is just, the elections are far—and state government as a whole is far more interesting than Congress. They also get a lot more done.
Bacon: That’s a good place to end on. Chaz, tell people what State Navigate is and how they can follow you guys’ work.
Nuttycombe: Yeah. So State Navigate, we’re a 501(c)(3) nonpartisan nonprofit organization. We do forecasting. We have district data for demographics, precinct-level maps. We only have some of this in some states, but we do have forecasts in every single state out now for state legislatures and governor races.
We also have campaign finance data in a lot of states, donor profiles, ideology of state legislators and how likely they were to vote for a bill or against a bill on the floor using DW-NOMINATE. We’ve got, man, I don’t know, aggregated news for states.
Bacon: Some of it’s free, some of it’s behind a paywall, right?
Nuttycombe: Yeah. Some is free, some is paywalled. So for example, we’ve got some interactives that are free, some that are paywalled. Like our Virginia early voting tracker is free. It is definitely our biggest traffic generator right now.
Bacon: Oh, that’s interesting.
Nuttycombe: So the best way to follow the early vote, which looks like it’s about three points bluer than the 2025 final result, which is crazy. So we’ve got a whole bunch of stuff, some free, some paywall. And so we are the website for state legislatures. We are the organization for state legislative data.
Bacon: OK. Chaz, thanks for joining me. Great to see you. Take care. Good luck.
Nuttycombe: Yep. Thank you for having me.
Bacon: Bye-bye.