What I Didn't Expect in Politics in 2017

It's snowing out and nothing else is really going on, so I'm taking care of some site housekeeping today. Every year, I make a certain number of predictions on these webpages, and every year I try to look back at how I did. This is the first of two posts on that subject—the one that will focus on politics.

Every fall, I issue race ratings, inspired by those at Inside Elections, for every downballot constitutional office up for election. For those types of elections (not so much for politics in general), 2017 was a pretty quiet year: only the Virginia lieutenant governor, Virginia attorney general, and Louisiana treasurer were on the ballot. Here were my ratings for those three races, originally issued in October and kept current (although they never changed) through November 6. They predicted a status quo election, with Democrats holding onto the two offices they already owned, and Republicans successfully defending their one seat.

The small number of races meant I had fewer opportunities to make a bone-headed mistake, and as a result the ratings validated quite nicely.

• Democrats won two out of two races I rated as Lean Democratic.
• Republicans won the one contest I rated as Solid Republican.

The final results are also pretty close to how one might express a "Lean Democratic" or "Solid Republican" race quantitatively. Here's the Democratic margin of victory or defeat in each of the three elections:

In a well-calibrated world, the Virginia average of D+6.2 is probably right on the border between Lean Democratic and Likely Democratic. Likewise, the Louisiana treasurer margin of R+11.5 is on the Solid side of Likely Republican. All in all, pretty close, though.

As I mentioned, getting these races right is no great achievement: last year offered a small number of fairly predictable races. The big challenge will be 2018; midterm cycles are the absolute busiest for downballot constitutional offices. My goal this year is to merely handicap all 142 of them before November, let alone get them all right. Wish me luck!

2017 Downballot Race Ratings for Louisiana and Virginia

The year following a presidential election is often the sleepiest time for elections (although certainly not for politics). Indeed, this November will feature only three of this blog's favorite races to analyze: downballot constitutional offices. As always, Baseballot will be the only site on the World Wide Web handicapping these under-the-radar yet multi-million-dollar campaigns. As my colleagues at Inside Elections do for congressional elections, I rate each state executive race on a Solid-Likely-Lean-Tilt scale, with the very closest of races earning the coveted label of "Toss-up."

According to my Big, Bad Chart of Constitutional Offices, the seats on the ballot this year include one lieutenant governor, one attorney general, and one treasurer. As it turns out, all of these elections will probably continue the status quo in the two states where they are taking place. Below are my initial ratings for the three seats; in the future, these ratings can be found on the "2017 Ratings" tab in the menu above, where they will be updated through Election Day.

Louisiana

• Treasurer: Solid Republican. After Treasurer John Kennedy was elected to the U.S. Senate in December 2016, a statewide special election was called to fill the remaining two years in his term. After six candidates squared off in the low-turnout October 14 jungle primary, Democrat Derrick Edwards (31%) and Republican John Schroder (24%) finished first and second to advance to the November 18 runoff. Democrats might have once had an outside shot at winning this seat: the party has overperformed in special elections thus far this year (probably due to the unpopularity of President Donald Trump), and the treasurer election just so happens to coincide with a competitive open mayoral race in dark blue New Orleans, meaning Democrats may constitute a disproportionate share of the electorate. However, it has quickly become apparent that Edwards isn't taking his campaign seriously. Despite an inspiring backstory (the wheelchair-bound Edwards was paralyzed by a brutal collision in a high-school football game; after doctors told him he would have to be cared for in an institution for the rest of his life, he instead got two graduate degrees and is now a practicing lawyer), Edwards has barely campaigned, missed campaign-finance deadlines, skipped debates and media events, and refused to talk about his plans until after he is elected. As a result, the Louisiana Democratic Party isn't even supporting his campaign, effectively ceding the race to the Republican Schroder, a former state representative. Schroder was the only candidate able to accrue significant funds from a tapped-out Louisiana donor class in the first phase of the campaign, raising more than all of his opponents combined ($436,954, compared to only $9,678 for Edwards). Now that he's the only Republican in the race, he'll use that dough to consolidate support and win easily.

Virginia

Sometimes, a state's downballot races are decided by turnout at the top of the ticket, and it looks like that will be the case in Virginia this year: so far, the commonwealth's two constitutional-officer elections have tracked extremely closely with its hard-fought gubernatorial race. That contest is rated Lean Democratic by Inside Elections, but if it ends up being more Democratic or Republican than predicted, the two elections below will too. (All three elections take place on Tuesday, November 7.)

• Lieutenant Governor: Lean Democratic. With a truly batty Republican primary behind us (which State Senator Jill Vogel might have won by spreading rumors that her opponent had an affair), the general election for lieutenant governor has been as uninteresting as the actual post, which is part-time and mostly consists of breaking ties in the State Senate. Vogel has struck an interesting balance between distancing herself from the rest of the Republican Party on issues like gay rights and also not showing any of Ed Gillespie's hesitance to embrace President Trump. Meanwhile, Democrat Justin Fairfax, who lost a close primary for attorney general in 2013, is attacking Vogel for her legal defense of various dark-money groups and a bill she sponsored to require women to have an invasive ultrasound before getting an abortion. Vogel also caused a mini-stir by saying Fairfax, who is black, couldn't "talk intelligently" on the issues. Ultimately, though, that gaffe is unlikely to make a splash in an ocean of daily Trump tweets, and, with each candidate having only about $300,000 in the bank, the LG race has been the quietest of Virginia's three campaigns on TV thus far. Polling shows Fairfax with a lead comparable to Democrat Ralph Northam's in the governor's race.

• Attorney General: Lean Democratic. Instead, all the downballot action in Old Dominion is here. The Republican Attorneys General Association has poured $2.75 million into the campaign coffers of Republican candidate John Adams—and yet he still trails Democrat Mark Herring in total fundraising by $2.8 million. In response, the Democratic Attorneys General Association has given Herring $1.7 million, helping to fund a major TV blitz by the incumbent AG. Adams's campaign has responded in kind, and he is further buoyed by the air support of the NRA's political action committee, the only outside group advertising in a downballot race so far this year. Adams and his Republican allies are accusing Herring of politicizing the attorney general's office (Herring has sued the Trump administration over immigration and tried to prevent out-of-state gun permits from being used in Virginia), but this light blue state might actually be on board with that: Herring leads polls by as wide a margin as any of Virginia's three Democrats on the 2017 ballot.

Wisconsin Superintendent Race Rated 'Safe Evers'

Hands-down the strangest regularly scheduled statewide election date is the first Tuesday of April in the year after a presidential election. Every four years, Wisconsin voters use their annual "Spring Election" to choose a new superintendent of public instruction—the only constitutional officer in the nation who never appears on a November ballot. And the next incarnation of this political Leap Day will soon be upon us.

On Tuesday, April 4, Wisconsinites will go the polls to choose either Tony Evers or Lowell Holtz to be their state superintendent for the next four years. Although the position is nonpartisan, the campaign has featured all the drama and wedge issues of a high-profile gubernatorial race—attack ads, backroom deals, and alleged conflicts of interest among them. That makes it a worthy pit stop for my ongoing project to handicap not just superintendent elections, but all constitutional-officer elections nationwide. Here's the state of play in the Badger State:

Heading into the campaign, Evers might have had good reason to doubt his ability to win a third term at the helm of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. The incumbent has enraged Republicans in Madison with his liberal views, including his support for Common Core. His traditional backers in the Wisconsin Democratic Party appear weaker than ever, having failed to carry the state for either Hillary Clinton or Russ Feingold (both expected to win handily) last November. One of Evers's staunchest supporters in his first campaign, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, has been weakened by Wisconsin's anti-labor Act 10. National trends have also been dire for Democratic state superintendents: after their latest decimation on the local level in 2016, Democrats no longer hold a single superintendent post chosen by partisan election, and Evers is one of just three left-leaning nonpartisan superintendents.

Meanwhile, conservative education advocates threatened to spend big money to elect a Republican identifier to the seat. Two filed to run in the February jungle primary: Holtz, the former superintendent of the Beliot School District, and John Humphries, an educational consultant. The two couldn't seem to get out of each other's way: just before the primary, Humphries alleged that Holtz had offered him a $150,000-a-year job in his administration and a private driver if Holtz would drop out and endorse him. Each accused the other of being a liar; only Evers stayed above the fray. In the first round of voting on February 21, Evers took a full 70% of the vote, with Holtz at 23% and Humphries at 7%. Evers and Holtz thus advanced to the April runoff.

With Humphries out of the race, Holtz, a supporter of school vouchers, hoped to attract national education-reform groups (and their money) to his cause with an issues-driven campaign. Instead, though, it was a liberal group, One Wisconsin Now, that made the biggest impact on the race with a well-coordinated opposition-research effort. Through a series of open-records requests, One Wisconsin Now unearthed a slow drip of stories questioning Holtz's competence and ethics. First, it was revealed that Holtz used his school (and therefore government) email address to solicit political support. Then it turned out that, as superintendent of the Whitnall School District, he donated some of the district's old football bleachers to the private school his own children attended. Performance evaluations revealed that Holtz had retired after a falling-out with the school board over his poor communication skills. The same problems appeared evident in his previous gig at Beloit, where he was reprimanded for a "lack of communication with the Board regarding significant matters," including his attempt to hire his wife for a position with the district without fully briefing the board.

Evers seized on Holtz's ethical shortcomings in his first TV ads this week, and they are likely to keep coming: as of the last campaign-finance reports in mid-February, Evers had $238,000 cash on hand compared to Holtz's $15,000. Although the conservative has reported $64,500 more in late contributions since then, it remains to be seen whether it will be enough for him to go up on TV—and it is certainly not enough to match Evers's resources.

No polls have been released on the race, but given Evers's dominating showing in the jungle primary, he appears poised to defeat Evers by at least double digits, and perhaps up to 40 points. What's more, Evers's strong lead in fundraising and Holtz's terrible press make a conservative comeback unlikely. There's no reason to rate this race anything less than Safe Evers.

What I Didn't Expect in Politics in 2016

This year was a bad one for people in the political prognostication business. I'm not afraid to say that I failed as spectacularly as anyone: throughout the Republican primary, I clung to the orthodoxy that "the party decides" and that the GOP would never let Donald Trump become its nominee. Throughout the general election, I dismissed Trump's chances of winning over a country with sexism, racism, and scare tactics. Now, we're 41 days away from him taking the oath of office.

I believe that any responsible pundit must reflect on such a failure before reengaging in the profession. We—or at least I—make our predictions based on past information. The election of Donald Trump represented a new piece of information that we must add to our calculus going forward. But we also must avoid overreaction. Throwing our hands up and declaring elections unpredictable is an overreaction. Saying that polling and other hard data are useless is an overreaction.

The truth is that Hillary Clinton did win the popular vote by about two percentage points, as predicted by the national polls. Under different rules of the game, that would be enough to hand her the presidency, and none of this Democratic and media handwringing would be happening. That's right—not a single person could have voted differently and everyone who currently looks so dumb would actually have been totally correct. Not a single person could have voted differently and the prevailing narrative would have been the implosion of the Republican Party instead of the meltdown of the Democratic. But because the votes were distributed just right, and because we use the Electoral College, not the popular vote, we got the outcome we did.

To me, the lesson of 2016 was randomness. Sometimes, data have errors. Sometimes, you have bad luck. Sometimes, unlikely things happen. In looking back at my predictions, I have a hard time seeing what I should have done differently. To predict a Trump win (in the general, at least) would have required a series of assumptions that, at the time, would not have been well grounded in fact or theory. Given the information I had before the election, I actually still think I made a sensible call in expecting Clinton to win. But my mistake was being so sure of it. In an effort to draw attention and project confidence, I treated an event that was likely to happen as one that was certain. I didn't fully appreciate that we live in an uncertain world. I didn't properly allow for the possibility of a polling error or something else weird happening. I didn't stop to think that a 90% chance still comes up empty 10% of the time.

On May 21, 2010, with two outs in the third inning, the Los Angeles Angels intentionally walked St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Skip Schumaker to load the bases for pitcher Brad Penny, a career .157 hitter. Six out of seven times, Penny makes the final out of the inning, preserving the 4–4 tie. On this occasion, though, Penny promptly hit a grand slam for what proved to be the winning hit. Was it the wrong decision by the Angels? I would argue that it was the right call; it just didn't work out this time. Sometimes, the right strategy can still lead to a bad result (and vice versa). It doesn't automatically discredit the strategy, as long as the strategy has been proven sound over a larger sample size. Data and political science remain the most accurate tools for predicting elections over the long term; one bad year doesn't change that.

Going forward, I will continue to use factors like polls and demographic trends in predicting elections. But I will change my attitude to be more humble about my own fallibility. Never again will I declare anything as a "slam dunk" or a "sure bet"; the fairest analysis acknowledges that anything can happen while still pointing toward the overall likelihood of one outcome. To those who heeded my political advice in 2016, I apologize for being overconfident. In the future, I promise that I will retain a more open mind and always be aware of my own limitations as a soothsayer.

One way to do that is to move away from the language of "calling" states and toward a probabilistic election forecast. The Cook Political Report uses such a system through its Solid-Likely-Leans scale of handicapping races. Every year, I use the same scale to make my annual constitutional-office election predictions, with much more favorable results than my failed presidential prognosis. Indeed, while I wasn't perfect in calling downballot races this year either, my more nuanced assessments of each campaign stand up better to post factum scrutiny.

In 2016, I issued Cook-esque race ratings for 52 downballot races: lieutenant governors, attorneys general, secretaries of state, treasurers, auditors, superintendents of public instruction, commissioners of insurance, commissioners of agriculture, a comptroller, a commissioner of labor, and a commissioner of public lands. In the 40 races where I gave one party the edge, that party prevailed 37 times. Specifically:

• Democrats won all 11 races I rated as Solid Democratic, including three that lacked a Republican opponent.
• Democrats won five of the six races I rated as Likely Democratic.
• Democrats won five of the seven races I rated as Leans Democratic.
• Republicans won 10 of the 12 races I rated as Tossup.
• Republicans won all five races I rated as Leans Republican.
• Republicans won all three races I rated as Likely Republican.
• Republicans won all eight races I rated as Solid Republican, including two that lacked a Democratic opponent.

Here is the Democratic margin of victory or defeat in each of the elections (save Washington treasurer, which was a Republican-on-Republican contest). Note that these numbers are unofficial election results from the Associated Press.

As in 2014, I underestimated Republicans across the board, but not egregiously so. Democrats' average 3.2-point margin of victory in Leans Democratic races, for example, is right where you want it to be, and it isn't a shock that one or two (OK, two) of the elections I rated thusly actually flipped the other way. However, the same can't be said of the races I dubbed Leans Republican. The GOP won them all, by at least 7.1 points (an average of 15.5). My Tossup races behaved more like Leans Republican should: the GOP won them by an average of 6.1 points, losing only two of the 12. That's what happens in a wave election, though: close races all tend to break the same way.

I can console myself with the fact that my biggest errors were isolated to just a few states. Misread the political climate in just one state, and you can blow several races, even as you accurately predict the rest of the nation. For me in 2016, that state was North Carolina. The Tarheel State was responsible for my biggest miss: declaring Democrat Wayne Goodwin and Republican Mike Causey's battle for state insurance commissioner a Likely Democratic contest. Instead, Causey defeated the two-term incumbent by 0.9 points. Almost as embarrassingly, Democratic Auditor Beth Wood—whom I deemed Likely to beat Republican Charles Stuber—prevailed by only 0.1 points in initial returns. (The race isn't even officially called yet, as Stuber has requested a recount.) North Carolina also played havoc with my projections by almost ousting Democratic Secretary of State Elaine Marshall (Solid Democratic) and rejecting Superintendent June Atkinson (Leans Democratic).

Oregon and Missouri were two other states that I misjudged. Democrat Tobias Read won the Oregon auditor's race by only 1.9 points, even though I had dismissed the contest as Solid Democratic. Meanwhile, my third and final incorrect "call" came in the Oregon secretary of state election, where Republican Dennis Richardson defeated Democrat Brad Avakian in a Leans Democratic competition. Farther inland, Missouri singlehandedly goosed the average Republican margin of victory in my Tossup and Leans Republican races when it swung much farther to the right than anyone was expecting. Its Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor lost a supposed Tossup race by double digits, and, while I expected its attorney general and secretary of state races to Lean Republican, I didn't anticipate them doing so by 17.4 and 19.5 points, respectively.

Elsewhere, I called most races right on the money. I'm especially proud of my performance in West Virginia, where I correctly foresaw a close race for secretary of state (presumed favorite Democrat Natalie Tennant was stunned by a 1.8-point loss) and GOP wins for agriculture commissioner and auditor, despite the state's ancestral Democratic tone. Clearly, handicapping downballot races is my calling more than presidential forecasting is—and that's OK by me. I'm looking forward to bringing these understudied races even more into the light as we turn the page to 2017 and the busy midterm year of 2018, when the biggest batch—over 140—of constitutional offices are on the ballot.

Loose Ends: 2016 Comptroller, Commissioner of Agriculture, Commissioner of Labor, and Commissioner of Public Lands Race Ratings

If you're still with me, congratulations! You've made it to the final installment of my 2016 race ratings. Below you'll find a grab bag of orphan executive offices—a comptroller, two agriculture commissioners, a commissioner of labor, and a commissioner of public lands—that weren't numerous enough for their own standalone articles. But what they lack in quantity they make up for in excitement. Every race profiled below is competitive to some degree, and two of them rank among the most-watched downballot races of the 2016 cycle. And a third involves the one and only Elevator Queen.

Below are my final batch of race ratings for 2016's constitutional-office elections. To see all 54 campaigns I've profiled and handicapped this year, click on the 2016 Ratings tab. Thank you for following along, and happy downballot election watching on Tuesday!

Comptroller

• Illinois: Leans Democratic. We've saved one of the most interesting constitutional-officer elections for last. Just after being elected to a second term as comptroller, Judy Baar Topinka died of a sudden stroke in December 2014. Newly elected Governor Bruce Rauner appointed fellow Republican Leslie Munger to the post ahead of a special election in 2016. It was just one of the ways that Rauner tried to radically reshape Illinois in his image during his first two years—but it was the only one that would be put to the test on the ballot. Now, Munger's campaign to finish out the rest of the turn has become a referendum on Rauner's governorship. Meanwhile, Democratic candidate Susana Mendoza is a protégée of Democratic State House Speaker Michael Madigan, Rauner's nemesis in Springfield. The campaign has gotten as icy as the Rauner-Madigan relationship itself: Mendoza is accusing Munger of "laundering" campaign funds through the Illinois Republican Party to pay for Rauner's campaign to weaken Madigan's legislative majority, while Munger has attacked Mendoza for taking a double salary as both a legislator and an employee of the City of Chicago. Thanks to their wealthy patrons, the comptroller race has become more high-profile and expensive than many U.S. Senate and governor's races on the ballot this year. Mendoza has raised $3.5 million and has spent $2 million of it on a statewide ad blitz; Munger has raised $8.9 million and dumped $4.6 million into TV. A full $8 million of Munger's donations came from just three donors, one of whom was Rauner himself. Illinois's blue hue, made even worse this year by Donald Trump, would normally make Mendoza a heavy favorite, but it's hard to look past that spending gap.

Commissioner of Agriculture

• North Carolina: Likely Republican. Republican Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler was reelected in both 2008 and 2012 by five percentage points—consistent, right? In 2012, his win even came against his 2016 Democratic opponent, Walter Smith. The environment for Republicans will be a mite more challenging this year, but Troxler is prepared. He is on the airwaves with a modest television campaign, while Smith has spent nearly every cent in his bank account and still has put out less than a third of Troxler's $312,035 spent. If Smith wins, it won't be because of anything he did, but rather a deep-penetrating Democratic wave in the Tarheel State.
• West Virginia: Leans Republican. It's another rematch in West Virginia: in 2012, Democrat Walt Helmick beat Republican Kent Leonhardt 51.6% to 48.4%, and Leonhardt has spent the last four years plotting revenge. He worked up a fundraising head start, and now he has outspent the incumbent $107,790 to $26,193. The big issue in the campaign? Potatoes. Helmick has invested a lot of his department's shrinking budget into helping West Virginia develop a potato-growing industry, but Leonhardt says it won't work and it's a waste of funds. The narrow margin last time strongly suggests that West Virginians haven't accepted Helmick the way they have other conservative Democrats like Joe Manchin, and the state has only gotten more Republican since 2012. If Leonhardt does indeed win, Republicans will own all 12 agriculture commissioners in the U.S.

Commissioner of Labor

• North Carolina: Tossup. Everyone in North Carolina knows the face of Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry, a.k.a. the Elevator Queen. In 2005, Berry decreed that a portrait of the labor commissioner—who is in charge of elevator inspections in North Carolina—should adorn every elevator in the state, and thus a cult figure was born. As friend of the blog Jacob Smith has researched, Berry's free publicity has been good for a few extra votes in elevator-dense communities across the state—which very well may have made the difference in the Republican's extremely close 2008 and 2012 re-election campaigns. She's in for another tough one in 2016 against Democrat Charles Meeker, the former mayor of Raleigh. He has outspent Berry $317,450 to $138,648, and North Carolina appears to have migrated leftward this year in other races.

Commissioner of Public Lands

• Washington: Leans Democratic. In case you haven't gotten the hint, land is a pretty big issue in the West, so it's not surprising that this open-seat race has erupted into a hyperbolic war of words and a sinkhole of special-interest money. Either Democrat Hilary Franz, an environmental nonprofit executive, or Republican Steve McLaughlin, a rancher and Navy veteran, will soon take charge of Washington's 5.6 million acres of public land—a whopping fourth of the state's total land area. McLaughlin has aligned himself with the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest's long-running fight over deforestation, saying proceeds should go to funding schools. Franz and her allies at the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) have accused McLaughlin of being a climate-change denier and opposing public ownership of land. A cable TV ad by the LCV has used McLaughlin's coziness with timber and alleged support of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation (McLaughlin agreed with their grievances but opposed their lawbreaking) against him. The LCV has been merely the second-biggest spender of the five Democratic independent-expenditure groups that have sunk almost $300,000 into the campaign. That has helped break a rough tie in the candidates' spending ($464,493 by McLaughlin, $420,570 by Franz) to give the Democrat a slight edge; she led 36% to 31% in a late October poll. If McLaughlin wins, there will be no elected Democrats serving as public-lands commissioner anywhere in the country.

Insurance Runs: 2016 Commissioner of Insurance Race Ratings

No issue has been a bigger political football over the past eight years than health insurance. Yet for all the sweeping reforms done at the national level, and the implementation executed (or not) on the state level, the nitty-gritty of insurance policy lies in regulation. The commissioner of insurance is the one who regulates—not just health insurers, but car insurers, property insurers, life insurers, and more. These little-known state officers' actions have the power to increase or decrease your premiums—and even to go after insurance companies that are scamming you.

Eleven states elect insurance commissioners, and it's the constitutional office where Democrats are closest to a majority: they hold six of the posts to Republicans' five. In 2016, five states will elect insurance commissioners, and Democrats will play defense in four of those races. The one Republican-held seat, North Dakota, is unlikely to go blue, so you can set aside those long-held dreams of a Democratic majority of insurance bureaucrats.

Below are my race ratings for commissioner of insurance; more in-depth explainers can be found after the jump. To check out all the downballot race ratings I've released so far, click on the 2016 Ratings tab.

• Delaware: Solid Democratic. We missed all the action in this race. It came in September, when New Castle County Sheriff Trinidad Navarro upset incumbent Karen Weldin Stewart in the Democratic primary. Weldin Stewart had never been particularly popular with the state Democratic Party, and Navarro hammered her for not being aggressive enough with Delaware insurance companies and for spending exorbitant sums on travel. By contrast, Navarro need only apply the lightest touch to defeat Republican Jeff Cragg, who has less than $1,700 on hand, in this blue state.
• Montana: Tossup. The Montana state auditor is actually not an auditor at all—it's an insurance commissioner, as the job's full title ("Commissioner of Securities and Insurance, State Auditor") implies. Democratic Auditor Monica Lindeen sought a promotion to secretary of state this year, leaving her chief counsel, Jesse Laslovich, to defend the seat for the Democrats. A mid-October poll gave Republican State Senator Matthew Rosendale a 43%-to-33% lead, but Laslovich dismissed it as coming before the bulk of his campaigning, unironically saying, "The only poll that matters is November 8." He kinda has a point, though; Laslovich has very aggressively spent over $200,000 on television ads, which began the same day the poll went into the field. Rosendale has only dabbled in TV advertising and indeed has struggled to fundraise, so maybe the campaign isn't over after all.
• North Carolina: Likely Democratic. In 2012, Mike Causey came within 3.7 percentage points of being the first Republican insurance commissioner in North Carolina history. He's back for a rematch in 2016 against two-term Democrat Wayne Goodwin, who has stayed above water in the state as a vocal critic of Obamacare. He's also a fundraising fiend, racking up $1.1 million (including, Causey points out, from insurance companies) to Causey's $61,011. However, a similar (albeit smaller) money gap existed in 2012, so I'm not ready to say Goodwin is out of the woods yet.
• North Dakota: Solid Republican. Republican Insurance Commissioner Adam Hamm is retiring, providing perhaps a glimmer of hope to Democrat Ruth Buffalo; the first time Hamm ran for the post, in 2008, it was a 1,833-vote race. However, it's far more likely that 33-year-old Republican Jon Godfread will walk away with the election. Godfread has been able to spin his career as a lobbyist for the North Dakota Chamber of Commerce as an asset, and it certainly has been financially: he's raised almost twice as much as Buffalo. And it's unlikely he's going to lose many votes to potential spoiler Nick Bata, the Libertarian candidate, who set off a firestorm when he wrote on Facebook a few weeks ago, "Make America Rape Again." Yes, that really happened.
• Washington: Solid Democratic. Democrat Mike Kreidler is gunning for a fifth term as insurance commissioner, and there's no reason to think he won't get it. He received 58% of the vote in the top-two primary despite a three-way race, and he took a 16-point lead in an October poll over Republican Richard Schrock.

Schoolhouse Rock the Vote: 2016 Superintendent Race Ratings

Depending on Springfield's system of government, before Gary Chalmers could become superintendent, he might have had to be elected to it. On the state level, superintendents of public instruction are placed in charge of our most precious resource: sloppy joes. Oh, and children, I guess. State superintendents are responsible for the day-to-day management of the entire state school system—often a billion-dollar enterprise—and make highly sensitive policy decisions on things like curriculum that hit close to home for many families. Superintendent elections have been some of the most contentious and downright unbelievable campaigns of the past few cycles, and yet they still get a disproportionately low amount of voters' attention. They are the battlefield where the controversy over Common Core plays out; they become bloated with campaign cash from special interests just looking for one inch of progress in the long-running trench warfare over charter schools. In Indiana, the superintendent's office has been a tense place to work in the last four years, as its occupant and Governor Mike Pence played tug-of-war with the fate of Hoosier education. In this year's election, control over North Dakota schools will go either to a candidate who had complimentary words for Adolf Hitler or an incumbent who has had multiple brushes with the law.

Superintendents of public instruction are elected in 13 states. Six of the elected superintendents are Republicans, and three are Democrats; four are nonpartisan, because apparently more states think it's important that education not be a political issue than who runs our elections, but we'll leave that aside for now. In a remarkable display of the presidential vs. midterm divide, all three Democrats were elected in 2012 and are up again this year; all six Republicans were elected in 2014, so none are on the ballot in 2016. Two of the nonpartisan offices are up in 2016 as well. With most of this year's races competitive, it's entirely possible that Democrats will exit 2016 with control of no state superintendent offices in the entire country. With the election only days away, we'll know the results sooner than you can say, "SKIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNERRRRRRRRRR!"

Below are my race ratings for superintendent of public instruction; more in-depth explainers can be found after the jump. To check out all the downballot race ratings I've released so far, click on the 2016 Ratings tab.

• Indiana: Tossup. Glenda Ritz sent Democrats into delirium in 2012 when she unexpectedly toppled Republican Tony Bennett (the superintendent, not the singer), who had earned the enmity of many during his term for shady use of public resources, his closeness to his wife's charter-school company, and manipulating the state's A–F grading system for public-school performance to benefit a political donor. During her term as Indiana's only Democrat in the executive branch, instead of building up her bipartisan bona fides, she clashed with Governor Mike Pence (to be fair, he attempted to strip her office of some of its powers) and even briefly intended to run against him for governor in 2016. Instead, she will run for reelection against less flawed Republican competition than she encountered in 2012: Yorktown, IN, superintendent Jennifer McCormick. Like many superintendent elections, this one has become a battle between teachers' unions, who support Ritz, and education reformers, who have donated thousands to McCormick. Indeed, the very donor Bennett was accused of favoring is in McCormick's corner, and Ritz has found success continuing to use Bennett as a bogeyman. Although Ritz has outspent McCormick, each candidate has roughly the same depth of resources, and it's one of the few constitutional-office elections where both candidates are up on TV.
• Montana: Tossup. Montanans have long entrusted their public schools to Democratic control—it hasn't been since 1984 that a Republican has won the post—but with incumbent Democrat Denise Juneau waging a long-shot bid for Congress, the job is wide open here in 2016. Both Democrat Melissa Romano and Republican Elsie Arntzen (also a state senator) are teachers, though only Romano has the support of the Montana Education Association–Montana Federation of Teachers, which has even gone up on TV on Romano's behalf. The union's total $300,000 in independent expenditures has helped make this the most expensive superintendent's race in Montana history. Both campaigns are also advertising on broadcast, and Romano has outspent Arntzen $247,000 to $123,000. However, Arntzen still clung to a 42%-to-38% lead in the race's only poll.
• North Carolina: Leans Democratic. Democratic Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson appears to have found a niche. In 2012, she won her third straight election for the office, by a close but comfortable eight points, even as Mitt Romney was carrying North Carolina in the presidential. Atkinson will likely have even more of a buffer this year, with North Carolina competitive on the presidential level, so she only needs to run a couple points ahead of the top of the ticket. However, her Republican opponent, Forsyth County Education Commissioner Mark Johnson, is no Some Dude and has kept it competitive with healthy fundraising totals.
• North Dakota: Not included in the chart above, North Dakota's superintendent of public instruction is technically a nonpartisan position, although both candidates identify as Republicans. Incumbent Kirsten Baesler is challenged by teacher Joe Chiang, who himself is, er, challenged. Chiang went to jail for embezzlement 30 years ago, a charge that he calls "ancient history." More recent, however, was the August 2015 Facebook post in which he said God answered prayers to heal "a sickly Austrian boy"... who turned out to be Adolf Hitler. "As a result millions of Jews died, punished for their disobedience to God." Amazingly, when the North Dakota Republican Party voted on whom to endorse in the race, Chiang still almost won, with 46% of delegates to Baesler's 54%. Baesler is no angel either; she pled guilty to shoplifting in 1997, and just last year she was arrested for allegedly assaulting her then-fiancé. (The charges were soon dismissed.) Despite this, Baesler should be safe in her quest for reelection; Chiang has less than $4,000 in campaign funds, and the incumbent dominated the June top-two primary, winning almost three times as many votes as Chiang.
• Washington: Unlike elsewhere, in Washington it doesn't take a nonpartisan position to pit two members of the same party against each other—but the Evergreen State's superintendent of public instruction is nonpartisan anyway. Democratic State Representative Chris Reykdal and Assistant State Superintendent Erin Jones, who is also a registered Democrat, square off for this open seat. Both profess to be progressives, and they even come down on the same side of the big issue in education these days: charter schools. Both say they oppose them, but pro-charter forces such as Stand for Children have chosen sides by donating generously to Jones, and the Washington Education Association is in Reykdal's corner. With little else to distinguish them in this blue state, however, polls have shown massive numbers of undecideds (the race went from a 16–16% tie in August to 18–17% in October). That's kind of concerning, considering the Washington Supreme Court recently ruled that Washington public schools are receiving an unconstitutionally low amount of funding, and the deadline to act falls in 2018—smack-dab in the middle of the new superintendent's term. Maybe that's why almost $300,000 in independent expenditures have been invested in the race. This is pretty much the definition of a tossup: totally unpredictable.

An Audit of Auditors: 2016 Auditor Race Ratings

Thirty-two down; 22 to go. State auditors don't make for the sexiest election campaigns; the job is usually reliant on being as nonpartisan as possible, not fiery and competitive. Auditors are the watchdogs of state government; they audit the books to make sure taxpayer money is being spent legally and efficiently. Sometimes, they bask in the sunlight for uncovering fraud, waste, and abuse; other times, as you'll see below, they themselves are committing those crimes.

Thirty-four states have auditors, but fewer than half of all states—23—elect them, making the job an awkward middle constitutional office between the ubiquitous AGs and SOSes and the obscure one-off public-lands commissioners and mine inspectors. Republicans currently occupy 14 auditor's offices, and Democrats sit in nine. However, thanks to very different Democratic fortune in presidential years vs. midterms, that party is defending a huge share of the seven seats on the ballot in 2016: five, compared to two currently held by Republicans. Most of the races are predetermined, but in my estimation, the GOP does have a clear shot at sniping one state away from their rivals—a seat they haven't won in 88 years.

Below are my race ratings for auditor; more in-depth explainers can be found after the jump. To check out all the downballot race ratings I've released so far, click on the 2016 Ratings tab.

• North Carolina: Likely Democratic. There's so much action in North Carolina this year—every big race is too close to call—that maybe there just wasn't enough to go around for the state auditor's race. Democratic incumbent Beth Wood faces former FBI agent Charles Stuber in what has so far been a quiet race. Stuber has barely had a cent to spend, and in this anti–HB 2 environment, there's not much reason to think he could topple a Democratic incumbent without much stronger tailwinds. Nevertheless, the state's closeness at least leaves open the possibility of an upset.
• North Dakota: Solid Republican. Although five-term Republican incumbent Robert Peterson is finally retiring this year, no Democrat filed to try to replace him. As a result, this is a lock for GOP candidate Josh Gallion.
• Pennsylvania: Likely Democratic. We know Pennsylvania is a swing state (kind of), and that the offices of attorney general and treasurer were recently stained by unscrupulous Democrats, but Democratic Auditor General Eugene DePasquale has remained above the fray. The incumbent doesn't seem to face much of a threat from Republican John Brown, who has raised only $77,112 all year, but DePasquale is taking the challenge seriously enough that he's run a steady stream of campaign ads. If the GOP unexpectedly surges in Pennsylvania this year, DePasquale could certainly lose, but for now he's the favorite.
• Utah: Solid Republican. You have to go back to the 1996 attorney general election to find any Democrat, at any level, who has won statewide in Utah. That's why Republican Auditor John Dougall is at no risk of losing his first re-election campaign.
• Vermont: Solid Democratic. Incumbent Doug Hoffer seeks his third term in 2016 under the banners of both the Democratic and Progressive Parties. His Republican opponent, Dan Feliciano, is a former Libertarian candidate for governor (he got 4.4%) and hasn't even raised enough money to trigger a campaign-finance report. Be ready to feel the Hoff on Election Day.
• Washington: Leans Democratic. In 2012, Washington elected Democrat Troy Kelley to be its watchdog against fraud and abuse. Little did they know that Kelley had committed fraud himself—stealing $3 million from his clients during his prior gig as a real-estate investor. He wasn't much better as an elected official; Kelley also hired an old friend to work for Washington's auditor office... remotely, from California. Kelley's trial is ongoing, and he has managed to avoid resignation so far, but he's sure as hell not running again for Democrats in 2016. That task falls to former Pierce County Supervisor Pat McCarthy, who will work to combat the perception of Democratic corruption. She has her work cut out for her against well-known Republican Mark Miloscia, who first ran for the auditor's office in 2012—as a conservative Democrat. A 14-year veteran of the State House, he finally switched parties in 2014 and won a seat in the State Senate. Miloscia represents a Democratic-leaning suburban Seattle district and has a proven ability to grab crossover votes. The Republican finished in a comfortable first place in the August all-party primary, though the two Democrats combined would have beaten him 53% to 37%. An October poll gave McCarthy a 39%-to-29% lead, but of course, with that many undecideds, this one could still go either way.
• West Virginia: Leans Republican. For the first time since 1977, someone named Glen Gainer is not auditor of West Virginia. Democrat Glen Gainer III held the post from 1993 through this year, when he resigned to take a job in the private sector. Prior to that, his father, Glen Gainer Jr., sat in the big chair for 16 years. The open-seat race the younger Gainer leaves behind will be very interesting. Republicans have not won this office for close to a century (since 1928), and West Virginia is, of course, an ancestrally Democratic state. But the Democratic candidate, self-employed auditor Mary Ann Claytor, has no political experience, and she won the primary almost by accident against a better-funded candidate who was endorsed by most of the state's prominent Democrats. By contrast, her Republican opponent, JB McCuskey, is already a state delegate. (Point: McCuskey.) Donald Trump will also have huge coattails in West Virginia (I'm thinking it will be his best performance in the entire country), and the state showed in 2014 that it was fed up with being a slave to candidates with "Ds" next to their names. (Point: McCuskey.) If Claytor were a well-established Democratic incumbent, I'd say inertia would keep her alive. As is, I would personally bet on McCuskey, who has spent $166,356 to Claytor's $18,518. However, West Virginia's schizophrenic political identity makes the contest very unpredictable, especially without any polling. Was the Republican sweep of West Virginia in 2014 a one-time occurrence thanks to the national political environment and low turnout? Or has the switch finally been flipped in West Virginia where the Democratic Party has permanently lost its grip on the Mountain State, not only in federal races, but in state government as well? Perhaps more than any other, the result of this race will be very instructive as to the answer.

Cash, Money, Polls: 2016 Treasurer Race Ratings

There seems to be some disagreement over the importance of a state treasurer. For instance, during 2015–2016's nine-month budget stalemate in Pennsylvania, the treasurer was the referee—the only one making real-world decisions about how to spend taxpayer dollars as the state's Democratic governor and Republican legislature played politics. But then there is North Dakota—where two of the three candidates running for the office want to eliminate it for redundancy.

Regardless of how important you may think they are, state treasurers serve as the chief financial officers of the massive financial enterprise that is your home state. They influence budgets, turn on and off the spigots of state spending, and manage billions of dollars of investments—often your investments, as a taxpayer and/or pension beneficiary. Sounds like a job for a true professional, right? Well, that or, in 36 states, a common politician.

As they do most constitutional offices, Republican dominate state treasurer offices where they are elected, 22 states to 14. That's largely due to the fact that most treasurers are chosen in midterm elections, which have recently been great years for the GOP. By contrast, the nine treasurers elected at the same time as the president include just two Republicans and seven Democrats. That overexposure puts the Democratic Party at serious risk of losing even more treasurerships in 2016; in fact, as you'll see below, they already have lost one. Whereas both Republican incumbents are running for reelection and are expected to win easily, five of the seven Democrats leave behind open seats.

Below are my race ratings for treasurer; more in-depth explainers can be found after the jump. To check out all the downballot race ratings I've released so far, click on the 2016 Ratings tab.

• Missouri: Likely Republican. This seat fits into a clear Missouri trend: open Democratic state offices that are probably going to fall into Republican hands. Like in the elections for Missouri attorney general and secretary of state, the GOP's treasurer candidate (State Senator Eric Schmitt) holds both a financial ($2.5 million to $350,315) and polling (49% to 40%) lead over the Democrat (ex-State Representative Judy Baker). Schmitt has run a heavy TV ad campaign that has helped him remain competitive in the normally Democratic St. Louis media market.
• North Carolina: Tossup. Democrat Janet Cowell has faced criticism for serving on corporate boards while state treasurer; even though she's retiring this year, Republican Dale Folwell has tried to make it the main issue of the race. Democrat Dan Blue would rather talk about the anti-transgender HB 2, but no one has really tuned into the race yet, with plenty of undecideds in an otherwise tied PPP poll. With North Carolina closely contested at the top of the ticket, chances are that this race will fall like a domino to the party of whichever presidential candidate turns its people out.
• North Dakota: Solid Republican. Elections in North Dakota don't typically carry much suspense, but at least this one has a twist: both of the challengers to curent Republican Treasurer Kelly Schmidt are running for the office for the sole purpose of abolishing it. Democrat Tim Mathern and Libertarian Eric Olson both say the office represents unnecessary government spending, which would actually be a pretty effective message in North Dakota if anyone were actually paying attention to the race. Instead, Mathern will be giving up his 30-year (!) State Senate career for nothing. Schmidt, who was reelected by 30 points in 2012, is untouchable.
• Oregon: Solid Democratic. An open seat ever since Democratic incumbent Ted Wheeler was elected mayor of Portland, the next Oregon treasurer may have quite a bit of power if Measure 97 passes. Although there's been no reliable polling, a Republican hasn't won statewide in Oregon in 14 years and this office specifically in 28. Democrat Tobias Read also boasts a nine-to-one fundraising advantage over Republican Jeff Gudman, and he's had the TV airwaves all to himself so far.
• Pennsylvania: Leans Democratic. Kathleen Kane wasn't the only Democratic constitutional officer in Pennsylvania to resign in disgrace since 2014. Ex-Treasurer Rob McCord resigned and pleaded guilty to charges of extortion for threatening potential donors with the powers of his office if they didn't donate to his failed gubernatorial campaign. After Governor Tom Wolf appointed a caretaker, Democrat Joseph Torsella and Republican Otto Voit are now vying for the open seat. Even though it's a potentially competitive race, it hasn't gotten the same attention as Kane's attorney-general seat for a few reasons: the McCord scandal, almost two years old, has faded from voters' minds more than Kane has, and there's more of a financial disparity between the treasurer candidates than those for AG. Torsella has raised almost $1 million and is the only one airing commercials on TV.
• Utah: Solid Republican. Republican State Treasurer David Damschen will face his first actual election after being appointed in 2015 to serve out the term of 2012 victor Richard Ellis, who resigned to take a job with a nonprofit college-savings program. However, Damschen knows how things work around the office, as he was Ellis's top deputy. With Democrat Neil Hansen at an operating deficit of $2,498, the race might as well be uncontested.
• Vermont: Solid Democratic. Democrat Beth Pearce has served as Vermont treasurer since 2011, easily winning reelection in both 2012 and 2014. This year, only a handful of minor-party candidates stand in the way of an uncontested third full term. Be sure to stop by and say hi to Treasurer Pearce on your February 2017 ski trip to Montpelier.
• Washington: Solid Republican. This is a huge sore spot for Democrats. After incumbent Jim McIntire declined to run for reelection, three Democrats and two Republicans sought the office in the top-two primary. You can guess what happened next: the Democrats split the vote, and Republicans Duane Davidson and Michael Waite advanced to the general election. Starting in 2017, this 56% Obama state will have its first Republican state treasurer since 1957. Democracy! The general could still be fun, though: the Australian-born Waite (he even still has the accent!) is a former professional tennis player, and he's since made a fortune in investment banking. He believes in the treasurer taking an outspoken role and hasn't been afraid to sling mud at Davidson, a soft-spoken county treasurer from east of the Cascades. While Waite has been able to use his connections to raise over $100,000 more than Davidson, Davidson has won the support of labor unions, so he may be the beneficiary of the state's up-for-grabs Democratic vote. The race is probably a tossup, just because we have no idea how voters will react to an all-GOP race in a blue state.
• West Virginia: Likely Democratic. John Perdue has been West Virginia state treasurer since 1997, and in this intensely loyal state, that's got to count for something. But he's also a Democrat in a rapidly reddening state in the year of Donald Trump, and in 2014 West Virginians signaled they were done giving "West Virginia Democrats" the benefit of the doubt over true conservatives in the GOP. That thinking talked me into declaring Secretary of State Natalie Tennant in serious danger, but Perdue is taking his campaign more seriously. Unlike Tennant, he's both outraised and outspent his Republican opponent, banker Ann Urling, and is the only candidate up on broadcast TV.

How to Rig an Election: 2016 Secretary of State Race Ratings

Donald Trump's claims that the 2016 election will be rigged against him are not only damaging to democracy, but they're completely divorced from reality. Elections are run locally by hundreds of different election authorities totally unconnected at any federal level. At the absolute highest level, elections are overseen in most states by a secretary of state.

The problem for Trump is that Democrats hold just 20 secretary of state offices while Republicans hold 26—including those in important swing states like Iowa, Ohio, and Florida. If these officials wanted to rig the election, most of them would do so to favor the Donald!

But if voters are so concerned about voter fraud and disenfranchisement, they should be more interested in this obscure state office. To a certain extent, secretaries of state do have the power to put a figure on the scale in state elections: choosing early-voting times, cutting the state's voter rolls, and removing the option of straight-ticket voting. So if you did want to rig an election, secretary of state would be a very valuable office to control.

In 35 states, that means winning the job at the ballot box. Currently, 1.5 times as many Republicans have been elected secretary of state as Democrats (21–14). That has the chance to change pretty drastically with the eight secretaries of state up in 2016. Up to six of the offices could conceivably change hands, thanks mostly to a suboptimal distribution of the six Democrats and two Republicans currently in office: four of the Democratic ones serve in red states, and both of the Republican ones are in blue states. This election seems likely to bring a recalibration, with possible Republican pickups in Missouri and Montana and potential Democratic pickups in Washington and New Mexico. And keep your eye on West Virginia, where I think an upset could be brewing.

Below are my race ratings for secretary of state; more in-depth explainers can be found after the jump. To check out all the downballot race ratings I've released so far, click on the 2016 Ratings tab.

• Missouri: Leans Republican. With Democratic Secretary of State Jason Kander running for U.S. Senate, this is a seat Democrats are at risk of losing. Although both candidates are political rookies, they both have ample name recognition, but one only has it in part of the state: Democrat Robin Smith was a local news anchor in St. Louis for 40 years, and Republican Jay Ashcroft is the son of the former Missouri senator and U.S. attorney general. The two are roughly even in cash on hand, but Ashcroft's family name plus the overall lean of the state are so far pushing him over the edge. Ashcroft has led both times that the Missouri Times weekly tracking poll has polled the race. Of note: Smith, who is black, would be the first minority candidate ever to win an election in Missouri.
• Montana: Tossup. Incumbent Linda McCulloch is term-limited, but she's still trying her hardest to see Democrats hold onto her seat. Last week, she released the voting history of her would-be successors to claim—possibly incorrectly, it's not clear—that Republican Corey Stapleton had failed to vote in nine elections in the last nine years. It's just the latest to-do in a spirited campaign that has seen more general-election broadcast TV ads by each side than any other secretary of state's race. The Democratic candidate, State Auditor Monica Lindeen, has proven she knows how to win statewide, but both sides are treating it as a competitive race, and we just don't have any other data to go off.
• New Mexico: Likely Democratic. This wasn't supposed to happen. In 2014, Republican Secretary of State Dianna Duran won a second term, 51.6% to 48.4%, over 38-year-old Democrat Maggie Toulouse Oliver—the most closely watched secretary of state race in the country. Duran's joy was short-lived; in 2015, she was charged with illegally transferring campaign funds into a personal bank account in order to fuel her gambling addiction. Her subsequent resignation triggered a special election for 2016, giving Toulouse Oliver a second chance in the much more favorable presidential electorate. She faces Republican Nora Espinoza in very much a rehashing of the 2014 race (Espinoza is even using Duran's campaign manager). Duran was one of Democrats' least favorite secretaries of state, an activist crusader against liberal voting laws like straight-ticket voting (which she eliminated and Toulouse Oliver has vowed to bring back), so this is perhaps the downballot seat Democrats most want to pick up. Luckily for them, Toulouse Oliver isn't blowing the Trump Tower–sized opportunity she's been handed; she's outraised and outspent Espinoza and has led in every poll of the race by at least seven points, including by a whopping 54–34% in the most recent one.
• North Carolina: Solid Democratic. North Carolina is one of the few states where the secretary of state isn't in charge of elections, frankly making it a tad less interesting than the others on this list. Also making it less interesting: incumbent Democrat Elaine Marshall, who has held an iron grip on the office for five terms. Marshall has coasted to reelection even in years when most North Carolinians were voting Republican (such as 2004, when she won 57.3% to 42.7%). Despite the state's uber-competitiveness this year, Republican Michael LaPaglia hasn't been able to make much of a race out of this; neither side has aired a TV ad, for instance. Tellingly, Raleigh-based Public Policy Polling hasn't even asked about the race in its North Carolina polls, despite surveying many of the state's other constitutional offices.
• Oregon: Leans Democratic. Republican Dennis Richardson lost a close 2014 election for Oregon governor, but he may have been playing the long game. This year, he's less ambitiously set his sights on the open secretary of state's office, and it's become the state's closest partisan race. On the Democratic side, Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian is running for a long-sought promotion (he also ran for Congress in 2011) but is relatively underfunded at $168,000 cash on hand. The two most recent polls actually both show Richardson ahead, but with massive numbers of undecideds who are disproportionately Democratic. The state's and year's overall political climate should pull Avakian through, but there's a chance Richardson becomes the first Republican since 2002 to win statewide in Oregon.
• Vermont: Solid Democratic. Just as he did in 2012 and 2014, Democratic Secretary of State Jim Condos will cruise to reelection with no Republican opposition. The only other candidate is Liberty Union Party candidate Mary Alice Herbert, who—fun fact!—ran for vice president under the banner of the Socialist Party in 2004. How the mighty have fallen.
• Washington: Tossup. Amazingly for such a blue state, Republicans have held the secretary of state's job in Washington since 1965. Republican Kim Wyman almost broke the streak when she first won by just 0.8 points in 2012, and she's in the fight of her political life here in 2016 against Democrat Tina Podlodowski. In the all-party primary in August—historically a good predictor of the general election in Washington—Wyman led Podlodowski just 47.9% to 46.1% in a race with no other Democrats or Republicans. Podlodowski has gone negative on Wyman for supporting voter ID and not canceling the state's non-binding presidential primary. Notably, the race has also attracted the attention of outside groups: the Republican State Leadership Committee has spent over $67,000, while Planned Parenthood has chipped in almost $2,000.
• West Virginia: Tossup. Natalie Tennant was an ambitious rising star in West Virginia Democratic politics—until she flopped badly in the 2014 Senate race with just 34.5% of the vote. The question this year, as Tennant seeks reelection as secretary of state, is whether she permanently damaged her brand by allowing it to be associated with national Democrats—the ultimate kiss of death in idiosyncratic West Virginia. There are no polls to even give us a frame of reference on this race, but Tennant doesn't seem too concerned—her campaign only spent $18,738 total through September, most of which was on the primary. A full list of Tennant's expenditures since July 1: $1,800 to NGP VAN (a voter file provider), $832 on palm cards, and $133 in credit-card processing fees. In other words, not even Tennant knows if she's in any danger, since she hasn't done any internal polling. Meanwhile, Republican Mac Warner has invested $83,703 and still had $90,710 to spend as of the beginning of the month. Like West Virginia as a whole did in 2014, I think this one could sneak up on Democrats. If so, it's completely irresponsible of Democrats to be so complacent about control of an entire state's election administration—particularly a state about to implement a groundbreaking automatic voter-registration and voter-ID law.

Election is Nine-Tenths of the Law: 2016 Attorney General Race Ratings

You know NRCC and DCCC and DSCC and NRSC; DGA and RGA and RSLC and DLCC. But do you recall the least famous party committees of all? The Democratic Attorneys General Association (DAGA) and Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) are far less glamorous than their higher-office counterparts, but they still funnel millions of dollars in both hard and soft campaign cash into attorney-general elections every cycle. Their donors? People and corporations savvy to the powerful role of state attorneys general.

As the chief legal authority in each state, attorneys general can decide whom to prosecute, what to sue over, even which laws to enforce. Questions swirled around Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi for choosing not to investigate Trump University after Donald Trump donated to her campaign. Red-state attorneys general have banded together to challenge the Affordable Care Act and federal environmental regulations. In West Virginia, as in many other states, the attorney general sets the tone for drug prosecutions and the state's fight against opioid addiction—which is why it caused controversy when pharmaceutical companies that provide those drugs, and are even the subject of state litigation, donated thousands to Attorney General Patrick Morrisey's re-election campaign.

That's just one of the pieces of intrigue in this year's attorney-general races. Pennsylvania will elect its fifth attorney general in four years after a vendetta against a political enemy brought down a rising Democratic star. Missouri and North Carolina will fill open seats left behind by two alums of their AG's offices—Chris Koster and Roy Cooper—who are good bets to become governor. More so even than lieutenant governor, the job is a firm stepping stone to higher office.

Every state has an attorney general, but only 43 elect them. Among these states, Republicans enjoy a 23–20 advantage in top cops (it's 27–22 overall, with one nonpartisan AG). This year, 10 of the seats are up for election across the country, including six Democratic-held seats and four Republican-held ones. The GOP is poised to add to its numbers slightly, with most of the competitive races on Democratic turf and an RAGA with far more cash to burn than the DAGA. A preponderance of open seats—four out of five of which are currently Democratic—in purple and red states may help to sink progressives.

Below are my race ratings for attorney general; more in-depth explainers can be found after the jump. To check out all the downballot race ratings I've released so far, click on the 2016 Ratings tab.

• Indiana: Likely Republican. Either way, history's going to be made in Indiana. If Democrat Lorenzo Arredondo wins, he'll be the first Latino elected Indiana attorney general. If Republican Curtis Hill wins, he'll be the first African American man elected Indiana attorney general. Both party committees have invested in their man, though the $600,000 Hill received from the RAGA was far more than the $31,000 the DAGA gave Arredondo, a decent sign of how the race is shaping up. Arredondo—the less famous of the two Mexican-American judges from Indiana—has spent a lot of time engaging Latino voters, a curious strategy in the 6.7% Latino state. It's hard to see him running ahead of any of the top-of-the-ticket Democrats: a well-liked governor hopeful, a Senate legend who is the son of another Senate legend, and a presidential candidate running against the imploding Trump train.
• Missouri: Leans Republican. This is how the parties behave when a seat is truly competitive: the RAGA has dumped $3.1 million into the campaign coffers of law professor Josh Hawley, while the DAGA has invested $500,000 in Teresa Hensley. The 36-year-old Hawley is a favorite of movement conservatives and was propped up by anti-labor donor David Humphreys during a bitter GOP primary; expect him to be groomed for higher office if he wins. With his financial advantage, Hawley has been able to air twice as many television ads as Hensley, and he's running a healthy nine points ahead of Eric Greitens in the race's only poll. If the candidates controlled their own destiny, you'd have to give Hawley the edge, but this one is going to come down to how fiesty the Missouri electorate is feeling on November 8. Until we know that, we're gonna keep hemming and hawing over Hensley and Hawley.
• Montana: Solid Republican. Attorney General Tim Fox was many Republicans' first choice to run for governor this year, but he demurred and instead is seeking re-election. Democrats, on the other hand, had to cajole their candidate, former State Senator Larry Jent, into the race at the last minute, as no one else was interested in challenging the broadly popular incumbent. With less than $30,000 in the bank as of the beginning of October, it's clear that Jent's heart just isn't in it.
• North Carolina: Tossup. No state has more tossup races than North Carolina—first lieutenant governor, and now the open attorney general's seat. Republican State Senator Buck Newton is trying to break quite a streak: the GOP hasn't won an election for North Carolina AG in over 100 years. He's getting ample help from the RAGA, which has made its largest single-race ad buy ever in North Carolina this year: $3.8 million. The ads started last week and immediately went negative on Democrat Josh Stein, a former state senator, for relying on his rich family and being an "extreme Harvard radical." However, Stein has an overflowing warchest of his own, and so far he's outspending the GOP on TV, emphasizing Newton's unabashed support for HB 2. A September PPP poll showed Stein in a stronger position than other downballot Democrats, but the race was still statistically tied and had lots of undecideds.
• Oregon: Solid Democratic. This one's a laugher. Republican Daniel Crowe is a political novice and told reporters "he falls outside the mainstream Republican ideology, though he declined to identify which of his beliefs diverge." Fortunately/unfortunately, we'll never know, as incumbent Democrat Ellen Rosenblum has 45 times as much cash on hand as Crowe in this bright-blue state.
• Pennsylvania: Tossup. TFW your party's rising star, the first female attorney general of Pennsylvania, gets convicted on felony perjury charges and resigns from office in disgrace. After the epic fall of Kathleen Kane, Republicans were convinced they could take back the Pennsylvania attorney general's office that they had historically dominated. Republican State Senator John Rafferty has tied Democrat Josh Shapiro to the scandals of Kane and other Democratic officeholders, but the attack isn't as potent as it could have been; neither Kane nor her caretaker successor was ever running in this race, and Shapiro, a Montgomery County commissioner, represents a clean break for the party. Shapiro has fired back at Rafferty's vote in the State Senate to cut funding to fight the opioid epidemic, a much more personal hit. Ultimately, if Trump drags down Pennsylvania Republicans as much as he's threatening to, it will be hard for Rafferty to swim against the tide.
• Utah: Solid Republican. Utah is two years ahead of where Pennsylvania is: in 2013, Utah Attorney General John Swallow resigned amid scandal, and Utah held a briefly exciting special election. This year notwithstanding, Utah is still a deep-red state, and Republican Sean Reyes won that race easily—and he has enjoyed a quiet two years in office thus far. He faces only token third-party opposition after Democrat Jon Harper dropped out of the race for health reasons.
• Vermont: Likely Democratic. Long-serving attorney general Bill Sorrell is calling it quits this year, leaving the office open for the first time since 1982. The state's brazen ticket-splitting makes it hard to peg downballot races, especially this year, when its electorate will be torn between strongly Democratic in the presidential race and Republican-friendly in the tossup gubernatorial contest. For lieutenant governor, I split the difference at Leans Democratic, but the GOP's candidate is much stronger for LG than for AG. Republican Deborah Bucknam—a private citizen, not a political veteran—has raised only $58,624 in the latter race. By contrast, Chittenden County state's attorney T.J. Donovan, her Democratic opponent, has raked in $405,171.
• Washington: Solid Democratic. Democratic Attorney General Bob Ferguson lucked out and did not draw any Republican opposition in his bid for a second term. Instead, Libertarian Josh Trumbull advanced with him in the top-two primary to November's election, but Trumbull will be hard-pressed to improve upon the 27% he garnered in the primary. Ferguson is safe as he bides his time for the next open gubernatorial election.
• West Virginia: Leans Republican. Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey edged out a two-point win in 2012, foreshadowing West Virginia's 2014 turn to red from head to toe. The state is only going to move farther right, and Morrisey should have an advantage as the incumbent. But Democratic Delegate Doug Reynolds has run a good race, assailing Morrisey as a carpetbagger in this notoriously tight-knit state. Through the end of September, Reynolds had spent $1.5 million and appeared to have caught Morrisey (who had spent only $328,594) with his pants down: the Democrat's campaign released an internal poll showing Morrisey ahead just 37% to 36%. However, the poll admitted that Reynolds was running 10 points behind Democratic candidate for governor Jim Justice, and the West Virginia Republican Party's own poll around the same time awarded Morrisey, at 46% to Reynolds's 38%, a lot more of the undecided vote. The late-summer ad blitz also left Reynolds with just $117,961 in the bank, and Republicans have outaired him decisively on broadcast TV in October. The RAGA is in the midst of dropping $3.5 million into the race, so while we've got to hand Reynolds a trophy for effort, it doesn't look like he's going to win anything else.