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| Daily Kos Elections | |
|---|---|
| Name | Daily Kos Elections |
| Type | Editorial project |
| Founded | 2006 |
| Founder | Markos Moulitsas |
| Country | United States |
| Headquarters | Washington, D.C. |
| Language | English |
Daily Kos Elections is an electoral analysis and forecasting project operated by the political blog Daily Kos. It produces race ratings, statistical forecasts, turnout models, and district-level analyses for federal, state, and local contests in the United States. The project has been cited by journalists, academics, and campaign practitioners for its data aggregation, polling adjustments, and grassroots-oriented perspective.
Daily Kos Elections began as an extension of the Daily Kos community in the mid-2000s, emerging amid debates following the 2004 United States presidential election and the growth of progressive online media. Foundational work by contributors leaned on techniques used in FiveThirtyEight, Cook Political Report, and Larry Sabato's Sabato's Crystal Ball, while seeking to integrate crowd-sourced research with systematic polling archives. The project expanded coverage across cycles including the 2006 United States elections, 2008 United States elections, 2010 United States elections, 2012 United States elections, 2014 United States elections, 2016 United States elections, 2018 United States elections, 2020 United States elections, and 2022 United States elections, refining models after high-profile forecasting debates involving polling errors in the 2016 United States presidential election and the performance of polls in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum by analogy. Partnerships and citations connected the site with outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, AP News, and academic research at institutions such as Harvard University and Stanford University.
The project publishes weekly and daily write-ups on contests including United States presidential election, United States Senate elections, United States House of Representatives elections, gubernatorial elections in the United States, and state legislative battles such as those for the California State Assembly and Texas Legislature. Reporting covers primary calendars tied to events like Iowa Democratic caucuses, New Hampshire primary, Super Tuesday (United States) and general-election battlegrounds such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, and Arizona. Coverage also extends to ballot measures exemplified by contests like California Proposition 8 (2008) and Washington Initiative 502. The site aggregates and archives national and proprietary polls from firms including Gallup, Pew Research Center, Quinnipiac University Poll, Monmouth University Polling Institute, and YouGov while contextualizing results with historical data from archives referencing the Federal Election Commission filings and state election offices such as the Florida Department of State and Ohio Secretary of State.
Daily Kos Elections employs polling aggregation, bias-adjustment, weighting by sample size and recency, and regression-based forecasting influenced by methods used at FiveThirtyEight and The Economist's election models. The team constructs district-level partisanship baselines using past returns from contests like the 2008 United States presidential election and 2012 United States presidential election, integrates demographic indicators from the United States Census Bureau and voter-file data similar to resources used by campaigning organizations such as the Cook Political Report and TargetSmart. Models adjust for house effects attributed to pollsters like Rasmussen Reports and Fox News and incorporate uncertainty via confidence intervals and Monte Carlo simulations akin to practices at Stanford University's computational labs. The methodology sections discuss turnout scenarios referencing historical cycles such as the 1994 United States elections and 2018 United States elections to calibrate shock sensitivity.
The project issued widely read ratings and forecasts for pivotal cycles including its assessments of the 2018 United States elections midterms, the 2020 United States elections presidential and congressional races, and the 2022 United States elections House and Senate battlegrounds. Its race ratings have been used by reporters at NPR, Reuters, Bloomberg News, and ABC News to contextualize shifts in competitive seats. Analysts and campaign operatives referencing Daily Kos Elections' partisan baselines and turnout scenarios influenced strategic discussions in states such as Georgia (U.S. state), Nevada, and North Carolina (U.S. state), and the site's archives contributed data for academic studies on polarization and redistricting by scholars at Columbia University and University of California, Berkeley.
Reception has ranged from praise for transparent polling archives and detailed district-level writeups to critiques of partisan orientation given the parent organization’s progressive affiliation. Commentators at The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, and National Review have questioned bias and methodological choices, while journalists at The Atlantic and data scientists at Princeton University have noted useful innovations in grassroots-sourced data collection. Critics pointed to forecasting misses during cycles affected by late shifts or undercounted demographies, invoking comparisons to forecasting controversies around 2016 United States presidential election and polling challenges highlighted after the 2020 United States presidential election.
The project is staffed by a mix of volunteer researchers, paid analysts, and editors drawn from the Daily Kos community and the broader progressive data journalism world, including contributors with backgrounds at institutions like The Washington Post, New York University, University of Michigan, and nonprofit groups such as Data for Progress and Center for Responsive Politics. Editorial leadership has collaborated with campaign veterans and academic consultants from places like Georgetown University and University of Pennsylvania to refine modeling choices. The organizational structure emphasizes collaborative editing, a publicly accessible polling archive, and regular methodological posts to inform readers and researchers.
Category:American political websites