The time has come for our biennial PR push, as we head into election season. However, this is not our forte. So, if any readers have thoughts about how we should approach this particular problem, or have relevant professional expertise, we would be very glad to hear from you at comments@electoral-vote.com.

Primary Season Is Drawing to a Close

Voters in Alaska, Florida, Wyoming and a small part of California took their turn voting on candidates yesterday. Here are the notable results:

Governor, Alaska: We have limited knowledge of Alaska politics and no experience with predicting how ranked-choice elections will work out based on primary results. What we can say, however, is that there were 12 Republicans, 3 independents and 2 Democrats on the ballot yesterday. The two Democrats finished in the top two positions, with moderate former state Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, who is very good at retail campaigning, taking 22% of the vote, and moderate former state Sen. Tom Begich, who has a name that is very famous in Alaska politics, taking 20%. Next on the list are six Republicans, all of them with 6%-11% of the vote. The total Republican share of the vote is about 55%, and the race raters have the state as solid Republican, so we assume the red team will keep the governorship, even if it's not clear right now which member of the red team that will be.

Governor, Florida: Here, Donald Trump got his man in Rep. Byron Donalds (R), whose 47.8% of the vote was easily enough to outdistance second-place finisher Lt. Gov. Jay Collins. And the Democrats got their man in former Rep. David Jolly, who used to be a Republican. It's a pretty red state, and if you put stock in how many voters showed up to cast ballots in the primary, there were 1.7 million votes on the Republican side of the primary and 1.25 million votes on the Democratic side. Most polls give Donalds a small but meaningful edge, usually around 4 points or so.

If Donalds wins, he could join a wave of newly anointed Black governors, which might also include any or all of Republicans John James in Michigan and Lisa Demuth in Minnesota and Democrats David Crowley in Wisconsin, Aaron Ford in Nevada, Jermaine Johnson in South Carolina and Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia. There is only one sitting Black governor right now (Wes Moore, D-MD), there have been only four Black governors in all of U.S. history (plus two Black acting governors, for brief periods during Reconstruction), and there has never been a Black woman governor.

U.S. Senate, Alaska: In contrast to the gubernatorial race, the signs here look good for the Democrats. Former Rep. Mary Peltola (D) will finish in first place and advance, with 47.8% of the vote. And the overall Democratic share of the vote is 49.6%, which is just shy of the promised land. On top of that, while second-place finisher Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) will advance, with 43.3% of the vote, it is likely that the other Dan Sullivan ("R"), who is in third place right now, will also advance. So, rodent reproduction is alive and well on The Last Frontier. The final candidate to make the cut down to four could be any of four or five people, drawn from both parties. Polls consistently have Peltola as a 1.5-point favorite in the general.

U.S. Senate, Florida: This was the shocker of the night, and something of a reversal of the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary, as an establishment moderate who was expected to advance was knocked off by a progressive. It is true that enemy-of-Trump Alex Vindman (D) never had a 20-point lead in polls (more like 4-5 points), but he did outraise state Rep. Angie Nixon (D) by a margin of roughly 16-to-1. Nonetheless, when the dust settled, Nixon won an easy victory, with 56% of the vote to Vindman's 44%. That means that the polls were off by 18-20 points, about the same as Wisconsin (but again, in the opposite direction).

On the whole, this is a much more agreeable test case for "progressive ideas can sell in Middle America" than Michigan is. Michigan is a must-have Senate seat if the Democrats are going to retake control of the upper chamber, and if the experiment with Abdul El-Sayed causes that seat to slip away, there will be much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments among the members of Team Donkey. On the other hand, Florida is a luxury, and not a seat the Democrats are really expecting to win, despite the fact that Sen. Ashley Moody (R) is an appointee and a somewhat weak candidate. If the Senate does not flip, in other words, it won't be because the Democrats nominated the wrong person in Florida.

U.S. Senate, Wyoming: Rep. Harriet Hageman (R) has won statewide before, has wide name recognition as a result, and had Donald Trump's endorsement. She was also up against four unknowns. So, of course she won the right to try to replace the retiring Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R), laying claim to nearly two-thirds of the vote. Her opponent will be James Byrd, whose slogan is "Byrd for U.S. Senate." Very snappy. That worked OK in West Virginia for half a century, but it's not going to work here. Yesterday, ten times as many Republicans (120,000) showed up to vote as did Democrats (12,000). Primary turnout is not always instructive, but there's no way to wave away a 10-to-1 gap.

U.S. House, Alaska-AL: Rep. Nick Begich III (R) easily advanced to the final four, with 46.2% of the vote. In second place was fisherman Bill Hill (I), who is running one of those blue-collar outsider campaigns that is all the rage this year, with 31.1% of the vote. Hill has the endorsement of third-place finisher Matt Schultz (D), who suspended his campaign, and who took 8% of the vote. The remaining 15% or so was split among a dozen candidates, including Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, several nonpartisans and one person whose party affiliation is "other." Hill is obviously going to try to run the same playbook as Seth Bodnar in Montana, Dan Osborn in Nebraska, and several others this year. It's certainly not impossible that he unites all the non-Republican votes and dispatches Begich. Not likely, but not impossible.

CA-14: This D+20 district is the one Eric Swalwell (D) left behind to launch what proved to be a crash-and-burn campaign for governor. Yesterday was the runoff for the right to finish his term. With about 70% of the votes in, the Democratic establishment candidate, Aisha Wahab, leads with 51% of the ballots. Not far behind is the candidate being backed by AIPAC, Melissa Hernandez, with 49%. Thanks to California's top-two system, Wahab and Hernandez are both Democrats, so the seat will remain in the blue team's hands. Progressives are generally not fans of Israel or AIPAC, and it's a very lefty district (across the bay from San Francisco), so we imagine Wahab will hold on. This same duo will face off again in November for a full term.

FL-04: Because Florida's gerrymanderers decided to fly by the seat of their pants, the state has a bunch of R+6 and R+7 and R+8 districts that could be in play in a blue wave. So, don't sleep on the possibility that something like 10 Sunshine State seats flip in November. However, for purposes of this exercise, we will mostly limit ourselves to seats in the "traditional" flip range, which is R+5 to D+5. The first of those is the R+5 FL-04, where Rep. Aaron Bean (R) is trying for a third term. He was unopposed yesterday, but found out his opponent will be activist, lawyer and former Congressional aide LaShonda Holloway, who got 57.3% of the vote. Her entire platform is economic stuff, excepting that she also has the nutty idea that Black people should be allowed to vote. If the good people of FL-04 see fit to send her to Washington, perhaps Chief Justice John Roberts will drop by her office and disabuse her of that notion.

FL-07: Prior to yesterday's elections, 2 incumbent senators and 10 incumbent representatives were sent packing by voters. Yesterday, Republican voters in FL-07 ran that latter number to 11, telling. Rep. Cory Mills (R) that his services would not be needed anymore, and they would prefer to be represented by former news anchor Ryan Elijah. We're not sure if there are more Navy SEALs or more former TV newscasters among the Republicans running for office, but it seems that those two jobs cover about 90% of the GOP's candidates.

Mills is one of the several Republican members of the House who is caught up in a scandal related to mistreatment of women. Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC) fell on his sword for the GOP, but Mills refused to follow suit, so now primary voters have done the job for him. That leaves Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) as the face of domestic violence in the House Republican Conference. The Democrat in the race will be Bale Dalton, formerly of the Navy and of NASA, who took 45.5% of the vote in a three-way race. It's an R+5 district, now without an incumbent, in what could be a blue-wave year. So maybe Dalton can flip the seat. However, Democrats would have liked their chances much better if the badly wounded incumbent had somehow made it to the general.

FL-14: This is an R+4 district held by a Democrat, namely Rep. Kathy Castro. She was unopposed yesterday, and will now face off against former state Rep. Mike Beltran (R), who is running on a 100% MAGA platform. Castro might have preferred to jump to a friendlier district once hers was redrawn to be much redder, but all the good seats were taken in the little game of musical chairs occasioned by Florida's mid-cycle redistricting. There's been no polling so far, and the race raters have it anywhere from "Leans Democratic" to "Leans Republican."

FL-20: This D+20 seat is very safe for the Democrats. The district is also 49.5% Black and only 20.6% white, so many Democrats think it should have a minority representative. However, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D) thinks she should stay in Congress, and that her current district, the redrawn FL-25, is not the best place to make that happen. So, she jumped to FL-20. Yesterday, four Black candidates, including one of the members of the hardcore rap act 2 Live Crew, split 55% of the vote, with none of them claiming more than 23%. That meant that Wasserman Schultz' 45% was more than enough to finish on top. So, she will advance to the general, and will indeed continue her career. Her victim will be an unknown named Brent Andersen (R).

FL-22: Rep. Lois Frankel (D) left this redrawn R+4 district for the bluer pastures of the D+9 FL-23. The Democrat who will try to replace her is educator Pia Dandiya, who claimed two-thirds of the vote yesterday. Dandiya is a moderate who was endorsed by Frankel. Running for the Republicans will be businessman Casey Askar, whose platform is a copy of Donald Trump's, and whose website promises that "I'll work with President Trump to keep building the American economy!" If the economic policies of the last 1½ years were "building," we'd hate to see what "tearing down" looks like. The race raters have this as "Leans Republican," but we're not so sure. When you have a moderate on one side and a not-so-moderate on the other, and it's a moderate district, that usually favors the moderate—in this case Dandiya—particularly when there's no incumbent.

FL-25: This is another re-drawn district; it went from being blue-purple to being red-purple, at R+3. Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D) is currently representing FL-23, but he lives in the new FL-25, and he didn't particularly want to face Lois Frankel, so he jumped districts. He was challenged yesterday by the much more progressive DSA member Oliver Larkin. The Representative won with ease, with 63% of the vote. He will match up against former Boca Raton Mayor Scott Singer, who is also running on a MAGA platform, and who seems to be the only Republican candidate in Florida who does not have an awkwardly posed photo of themselves with Trump. This one is universally rated as a toss-up.

U.S. House, Wyoming-AL: Nine Republicans were vying for the right to succeed Harriet Hageman in the House, and Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray was the one who triumphed, doing so with a little over a quarter of the vote. The Democrat who advanced yesterday is former state Sen. Lisa Kinney, who is a lawyer and a librarian, and who appears to be running a spirited campaign that involves going to restaurants and having beer and pizza with would-be constituents. Unfortunately for her, Wyoming hasn't sent a Democrat to the House since the 1970s, and that isn't going to change this year.

And that's the scoop. Next week is a runoff in Oklahoma. Then, in early September, a handful of former colonies on the East Coast bring up the rear.

As usual after a primary election, we have updated the Senate candidates page and the gubernatorial candidates page. Both pages have photos of all the candidates and capsule descriptions of the races. (Z)

A Scandal In Poll-hemia

When we went live with our Senate map on Monday, we explained that we are picky about the pollsters we include in our database because some pollsters don't have a track record, and others are partisan houses that might be less-than-honest with what information they do, and do not, release.

What we did not anticipate—though this situation IS covered by our finickiness—is that a pollster might be making their data up out of thin air. However, that is apparently what was happening with Median Strategies, a pollster with a very legitimate-sounding name, and a very, very short track record (first poll: late July of this year). That outfit released a poll of the Los Angeles mayor's race that had everyone talking, as it had Karen Bass up 12 points on Nithya Raman, with most of the former voters of Spencer Pratt gravitating toward the more moderate Bass. The Los Angeles Times looked closely at the cross-tabs, however, and thought something was awry. So, the paper contacted the pollster with questions, and the pollster admitted the data was 100% fake.

According to the e-mail that the people (person?) behind Median Strategies sent to the Times, they faked their data to make a point. Here is their explanation:

Median Strategies was created as a short term social experiment to examine how purported polling information could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification. We are not seeking publicity or attribution for the individuals involved and are declining interviews.

In the same e-mail, the firm (one-person operation?) announced that it's permanently shutting down.

We are not entirely sure we buy this story. It strikes us as possible that Median was trying to get started as a legit pollster, but didn't have the funding, and so cut some corners, and then got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Alternatively, it's possible they did the work, but screwed up their model so badly, it produced wacky results (we'll get to another of their polls, already proven wrong, in a moment). It is unlikely that anyone involved with Median will ever find work in the polling business again, but if they are holding out hope, then "we were conducting a social experiment" is much better than "we screwed up bigly."

That said, let us proceed with the assumption that the story is true, and the point was to show how easy it is to get fake polling into circulation. If so, the "experiment" was a moderate success, at best. The Bass campaign ran with the phony mayoral poll, and sent out a tweet repeating the numbers (the tweet was later deleted). The California Post, which is the new, west-coast version of The New York Post, ran a pretty big story about it. And... that's about it. Not too many others fell for it, while the Times smelled a rat, and discovered the deception.

And that brings us to the other poll from Median that got a lot of attention, a poll of the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary that had Francesca Hong leading David Crowley by 20 points. As everyone knows by now, that was a wild miss; Crowley actually won by about half a point. And this new development might seem like an answer to the question of "How did the pollsters get Wisconsin so wrong?" (i.e., they were making stuff up), but it's not. Each of three polls conducted after Mandela Barnes dropped out of the race also had Hong up by a similar number. And the other two pollsters, Slate Navigate (had Hong up 44%-22%) and PPP (had Hong up 42%-24%) are legit pollsters with actual track records. If it has been only one, unknown pollster who had the race as a blowout, then every responsible outlet (including us) would either disregard the poll or would do what we've done a million times, writing something like "If this poll is correct, then that's a big deal, but you never want to put too much faith in a single poll, particularly from a little-known pollster. So, take it with a fistful of salt or two."

In short, we don't really think Median Strategies fooled very many people, but we suppose they did give all the psephologists an opportunity to remind everyone that, thanks to the Internet, modern polling is kind of the Wild West, and there are a lot of unknown pollsters out there. So, as Obi-Wan Kenobi observed, we must be cautious.

Meanwhile, on a very related note, it's time for a pop quiz. Which of these are legitimate news outlets?

• Alaska Navigator
• Iowa Voice
• Maine Policy Updates
• The New Hampshire Daily
• Ohio Pulse
• Peach State Post (Georgia)

We will wait a moment while you lock in your selections. It is... instructive that all of them report on states with critical U.S. Senate races this year.

The answer, as many readers will have guessed, is that none of them are legitimate. They were all created by One Nation, a PAC that is the less savory partner of the more above-board Republican National Senate Committee. We have talked many times about push polling—polls meant to promote political messages, and not to collect actual data. Well, these outlets are all push journalism. Their purpose is not to cover the news, but to promote the GOP's messaging in a manner that appears, at a glance, to be fair and balanced and nonpartisan.

We aren't sure how many people are actually taken in by these outlets. First of all, because they are fake, they are not ranked highly in Google searches—and, in fact, Google's AI gives a warning that they are fake if you search for them. Second, because even if you manage to find, say, the Peach State Post, it's more than a little suspicious that they only produce a couple of stories a week, mostly about what Donald Trump is up to, with no bylines.

Still, as with the fake pollster, there really are completely phony news outlets out there (besides Fox, we mean). By and large, with local news, we prefer to link to local sources as opposed to national ones, since we assume the local sources know local subjects better. It's fairly easy when dealing with the major and semi-major newspapers. It's also pretty easy with TV stations that also post their stories in written form. However, we sometimes have to look very carefully at smaller outlets, or those that are "cleverly" named. For example, Yellowhammer News is a legit site for Alabama news; the Ames Voice is a legit site for suburban/rural Iowa.

"Trust... but verify," the old saying goes. We would say that the point of this item is that, these days, you should probably skip "trust" and jump right to "verify." (Z)

Ossoff Takes Off the Kid Gloves

Some candidates for political office don't worry too much about the nitty-gritty of their campaigns, and leave those details for their staffs to figure out. Others are very hands on, and keep a close eye on every decision that is made, and every word that is uttered by anyone working for the campaign. Insiders say that Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) is most definitely in the latter category, which makes the latest developments in his campaign very interesting, indeed.

In short, starting in the last week or so, Ossoff has been laying into Donald Trump. Over the weekend, the Senator went viral with this relatively brief portion of what was actually a 30-minute speech:

While the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks. So he doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.

The Natalie being referenced is clearly Natalie Harp, the presidential aide who is with Trump at nearly all times, and who famously carries a portable printer so she can share positive news coverage and tweets with the President in real time. She also "qualified" for the real airplane flight from Turkey to the U.K., as opposed to being used as a decoy.

After the clip of that remark got north of 6 million views on eX-Twitter, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle decreed that "Nobody gives a shit what this lightweight loser says." And yet, Ingle himself cared enough to add "Jon Ossoff is a cringeworthy, feminine theatre kid cosplaying as Barack Obama." Trump himself slurred Ossoff as a "Pee-wee Herman lookalike." And White House Communications Director Steven Cheung had this to say:

Jon Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck loser in politics. Instead of denigrating hard working people serving their country, Jon should look deep into his soul and ask himself why he's a miserable person who hates this country. It's because he's a radical, extremist Dumocrat.

You should probably take that seriously. After all, if there's anyone who knows what a cuck loser looks like, it's Steven Cheung.

The White House's fury, despite not claiming to care what Ossoff has to say, is interesting. Obviously, Trump does not like to be the target of insults, so that's part of it. But the vitriol here came particularly fast and was particularly acidic. The general consensus, though there's no way to prove this, is that Ossoff managed to strike a particularly raw nerve. There have been many rumors that Trump and Harp are having an affair and, whether that is true or not, there have also been many rumors that First Lady Melania Trump is angry about the possibility and about how much time her husband spends in the company of a much younger woman. Truth be told, we are skeptical that Trump is capable of carrying on an affair with anyone anymore—or that any woman would be willing to do it—and we're also skeptical that Melania cares anymore if he's unfaithful. But we're not specialists in gossip, and the folks who are say this could well be what's going on here.

What is much more interesting to us is Ossoff's very obvious change in gears. There have been a dozen polls of his matchup with Rep. Mike Collins (R), and the Senator has led in all but one of them. The exception is a poll taken in September of last year, and that had the race as a tie. The most recent poll of the race, from a Republican house, had Ossoff up by 7 (50% to 43%). The aggregators have him leading by an average of 7.5 to 9 points. Point is, he could afford to put it in cruise control right now. Certainly, he does not need to "shake things up."

There's really only one compelling explanation for the change in tone, and that is that Ossoff is not so much running for the Senate in 2026 anymore, and now has shifted to running for the White House in 2028. He insists that is not the case, but of course he's not going to admit it. Voters hate to think they are just being used as a springboard to bigger and better things.

Ossoff's change in direction also has big implications for someone else: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). If Ossoff is running for president, AOC might want to think carefully when deciding whether to run for the House, the Senate, or president in 2028. If she opts for the latter, she will not be a shoo-in for the "charismatic young lefty lane." Plenty of Democrats may decide that a lefty young white man is safer than a lefty young woman of color.

Also notworthy, Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY) appeared on CBS' Face the Nation on Sunday, and he had... some thoughts. Here is what he said:

So, fix the darn government. Constitutional amendment. It is time. It should outlaw partisan redistricting and enshrine part of the Voting Rights Act right there in the constitution. It should create term limits for Congress and the Supreme Court. No more gaming those appointments. It should also overturn Citizens United, and I think call for direct elections of the president and the vice president. That could actually make things work. A big idea that would, yes, change government, but in a way enshrined in the constitution where people would know it's going to get better.

Host Ed O'Keefe was somewhat flummoxed, as he did not expect a moderate Southern governor to casually call for an end to the Electoral College, among other things. The careful reader will notice that none of these ideas have anything at all to do with governing Kentucky, but they are very big with the Democratic base. Indeed, one might just describe that statement as the beginnings of a platform for a national campaign. Or a stump speech.

The two lessons there, then, are these: (1) Even though the 2026 midterms are still more than 2 months away, the 2028 presidential campaign has already begun, and (2) Ossoff and Beshear are definitely running. Kamala Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) have also made clear they're going to run, which means that the horse race is already getting crowded. Anyone else who plans to run better get themselves on Face the Nation or Meet the Press soon, so they can share their proto-platform. (Z)

Neville Chamberlain, Meet Jeanine Pirro

As everyone knows, Jeanine Pirro is in the doghouse because she told the truth in court about the reflecting pool mess. In a very thorough brief, she explained what everyone already knew: The damage to the reflecting pool was not the work of vandals (or the indicted defendants), but was instead due to a shoddy and rushed installation and a Trump excursion in the Beast over the liner before it was fully cured.

To appease her master, she has now, to great fanfare, set up what's called a "special grand jury" to manufacture a case do some investigative work on an as-yet unnamed subject. It sure sounds big and important, but a special grand jury is actually not all that special. It's mostly used in larger cities to work on complex criminal cases involving organized crime or corporate corruption. Hey, maybe she's investigating Trump! (Pause for laughter.) A special grand jury was, for example, convened in Houston 20 years ago to investigate Enron, the energy company that was part of a massive fraud.

Special grand juries can sit for longer periods of time than regular grand juries to ensure continuity and limit delays for those larger and more complex criminal cases. It's unusual to have a special grand jury in D.C., because the district is small and those large cases are not typically run out of the jurisdiction.

The special grand jury project is being overseen by Steven Vandervelden, a former dance photographer who tried and failed to indict the six sitting lawmakers who accurately told military personnel that they can (and are arguably obligated to) disobey illegal orders. A special grand jury can issue a report even if they don't bring an indictment, so perhaps Pirro and friends are thinking they can smear a few people Trump hates and that will make him like her again.

The legal standard that must be met for issuing a report is a "preponderance of the evidence," which is a lower standard than the "beyond a reasonable doubt" required for a criminal conviction. But there are very strict rules and procedures when it comes to these grand juries and issuing any reports. For example, the grand jury has to be investigating some legitimate criminal wrongdoing and a majority must agree to issue a report. Anyone named in the report has a right to respond and present witnesses in their defense. And a judge must sign off on it to ensure that the legal requirements are met. In D.C., that judge is Chief Judge James Boasberg, who is very familiar with the shenanigans of Trump's DoJ and will be carefully scrutinizing all aspects of this unusual request. We'll see if just announcing empaneling the special grand jury is enough to get Pirro back in Trump's good graces even if, like most of her other cases, it doesn't go anywhere. (L)

Today's Senate Polls

No surprises here. Arkansas may have given us Bill Clinton, but it's a very red state now, while Michele Tafoya is a weak candidate who is not a great fit for purple-blue Minnesota. (Z)

State	Democrat	D %	Republican	R %	Start	End	Pollster
Arkansas	Hallie Shoffner	35%	Tom Cotton*	51%	Aug 14	Aug 18	J.L. Partners
Minnesota	Peggy Flanagan	46%	Michele Tafoya	41%	Aug 13	Aug 17	SurveyUSA

* Denotes incumbent

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