The Almanac Substack: What we posted this week (Oct. 18-Oct. 24)

Hi all! We’ve reached the end of another week at the Almanac of American Politics Substack with Louis Jacobson — and Election Day looms. We’ve at the point of the election cycle where the new district descriptions and updated lawmaker profiles have slowed to a trickle, and our preview and results articles for the primaries are fully over. Most of what we’re publishing these days is my own analysis of the political battleground.

In case some of our articles slipped through the cracks this week, here’s a recap of what we published.

New political analysis:

Updated lawmaker and governor profiles:

Our publication of redistricted congressional district profiles:

Reference material from previous weeks:

Meanwhile, here’s what I wrote for my day job as chief correspondent for PolitiFact:

Here’s what we should have coming up:

• The general election is almost here. Our posts are slowing down a bit now because it’s too late in the cycle for lawmakers to announce their retirements or vote on major bills, and also too late for states to redraw their congressional district lines. But we will keep posting handicapping of races for Senate, House, governor, and state executive positions, as well as our coverage of state supreme court races and ballot measures.

• We have completed our district descriptions of the 170-odd redistricted House seats. The full index is here. No one else publishes this material — but you need to be a paid subscriber to access these new profiles.

• We will continue posting updated biographies of members of Congress and governors who have experienced major developments since the hard copy of the Almanac was published in early September 2025 — we’ve published 286 new or updated bios so far, in some cases, updated multiple times. That’s about 49 percent of all the officeholders we cover. These are accessible only to paid subscribers.

• And we are posting advance biographies of the candidates who are odds-on favorites to win a seat in the next Congress. They qualify for a biography by winning the nomination for an open seat that leans heavily toward their party. These profiles are accessible to paid subscribers only.

Please consider becoming a paid subscriber, so you can access the new district profiles and lawmaker bios. We think this is value added and worth the price.

And for readers of the Substack who first came to know the Almanac in its paper version, fear not — we are assembling our writing team, and we plan to start writing in earnest not long after the election has concluded.

Thanks for your support, and please don’t hesitate to ask me any questions!

All best,

Lou Jacobson