My policy when it comes to fundraising for legislative races has been pretty simple: With rare exceptions, I generally only include districts with a Partisan Voter Index (PVI) rating of less than 10 points. That is, so-called "swing districts" where either the Democratic or Republican candidate has only won by 10 points or less in recent years. This helps donors concentrate their donations on races where the Democratic nominee has a realistic chance of winning (or losing).
However, there's another important factor to consider, especially in states where Democrats winning or losing a handful of seats isn't going to shift control of the state legislature no matter what due to it being solid red (Indiana, for instance) or solidly blue (as in California): Competitive U.S. House, U.S. Senate and other statewide races.
Yes, I have fundraising pages dedicated to each of these already, but as a study conducted by It Starts Today Blue Ohio showed, just having a nominee for state house on the ballot increases the vote share for the top of the ticket by 1.5%, and funding a challenger at $0.36 per eligible voter increases turnout by 1%.
In other words, even when there's no chance of winning a legislative seat, boosting turnout for that candidate helps other candidates up the ballot.
As an example, let's look at California's 41st Congressional District.
CA-41 is currently GOP-held, but it's rated as a R+03 Toss Up district by Cook Political Report.
According to data from Blue Ripple Politics, there are two state legislative districts which significantly overlap with CA-41: SD-32 and HD-63.
SD-32 has a PVI of R+16 while HD-63 has a PVI of R+10, so normally I wouldn't bother including them on my California legislative page, since the Democratic nominee is extremely unlikely to win in either district. HOWEVER, boosting Democratic turnout for these two legislative Dems will also boost turnout for the Democratic CA-41 nominee...who does have a chance at flipping that seat.
Only CA's odd-numbered Senate seats are up this year, so I'm not adding SD-32, but I am adding HD-63, which overlaps CA-41 by 75% according to Blue Ripple Politics.
This also holds true in statewide races such as Alaska's "At Large" House district, where boosting turnout for Dems in every legislative race also helps Mary Peltola hold onto her U.S. House seat even though the state as a whole leans red, or in Ohio where boosting turnout for every legislative Dem, no matter how deep red the district, still helps Sherrod Brown hold onto his U.S. Senate seat.
This doesn't mean that I'm going to include every legislative seat--there's still just too many of them for that to be practical--but it does mean that I'll be adding key races where I think doing so will help boost higher office Dems chances the most.
However, I'll make sure to list these seats separately on the page to make it clear why they're being included so that donors understand the strategy and can choose who they donate to accordingly.
I'll be rolling out these additions gradually over the next week or two, one state at a time.
