Rob Sand may be the last remaining Democrat holding statewide office in Iowa, but as he wages a bid for governor, he lays out a compelling case for why the state is purpler than you might think on this week’s episode of The Downballot podcast.

Sand tells us about the massive lottery scandal he busted, which thrust him onto the national radar; how he hung on to win reelection as auditor by just 3,000 votes in 2022, even as all his fellow Democrats lost; and why Iowans are especially fed up after a decade of one-party rule, giving him an opening next year. He also shares his love of cartograms—those maps that depict population rather than area. After all, land doesn’t vote!

Polling is more difficult than ever, particularly in a city as complicated and diverse as New York. Adam Carlson, founding partner at Zenith Research, joins us to discuss how he conducted a detailed poll of the New York City mayor’s race and how he views the state of that race now. We also get his take on the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races as well as Prop 50 in California and take a peek at 2026.Host David Beard and guest host Joe Sudbay discuss the current moves to gerrymander Kansas and how that might launch a serious Democratic challenger into the Senate race there. They also discuss the Wisconsin governor’s race, where a hardline conservative Republican has jumped in and the D.C. delegate race, where Eleanor Holmes Norton has her first serious challenger in years.

Digital advertising is an increasingly important part of every political campaign, but it turns out tons of money gets wasted on, well, crap. Myles Bugbee, the founder of Persuasion & Pixels, joins us on this week's episode of The Downballot podcast to explain how middlemen in this opaque new world extract money from advertisers without adding any value—and how campaigns can avoid common pitfalls. Republicans have already learned some important lessons, but Democrats, Bugbee says, are still playing catch-up.

Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard also explore the brand-new candidacy of Tejano music star Bobby Pulido, whose bid for a House seat in South Texas has Democrats hopeful he can help reverse the party's losses with Latinos. They discuss party-switcher Geoff Duncan, who's now running for governor of Georgia as a Democrat after serving as lieutenant governor as a Republican. And they check in on former Rep. Wiley Nickel, a past guest on the program who just launched a bid for a powerful district attorney's post.