AFL-CIO Political Portal

SITE HISTORY
When I started this site, it was just a little project I came up with to keep me busy for a week. The initial intent was just to create a page with frequently-used links for people in the AFL-CIO Politics and Field Department. It expanded into a much bigger project, and after developing it for internal use, we decided to open it to the larger progressive community.

WHAT’S NEXT
Because the scope of this portal kept expanding, I did a lot of things in kind of hodge-podge ways in order to make it work. Now that the election is over, I will be redesigning parts of the site and adding new features, as well as removing some of the election 2006 stuff. It is our goal to keep the site up and running during this process, but technical glitches during redevelopment may cause occasional downtime and errors.

The front page will not be updated that often, but the state RSS feeds and other automated information will continue to update. The “meat” of the site was never on the front page anyway!

Feel free to post suggestions for new features you’d like to see.
Trade Show Training

From MSNBC

Here are links to all the Secretary of State websites, as well as other sites you can use to check election results:

Secretary of State Pages

On Nov. 7, a handful of voters will decide if we will have another two years of Republican corruption and abuse of authority. The outcome of these races will determine the political environment for the 2008 presidential election and years to come…we can’t get carried away with premature celebration—it’s still a very tough fight that will be decided by a few thousand votes in a dozen districts.

Mike Podhorzer
Deputy Political Director
AFL-CIO

Read more…

It’s not too late to get involved. We have phone banks and walks running all day in at least 20 battleground states. To find an event near you, go to http://www.aflcio.org/issues/politics/labor2006/events.cfm and sign up for a phone bank, walk, or other activity to help take back this country for working families.

Just wanted to point out a few handy sites in case people have trouble figuring out where to vote, need other voting information, or run into difficulties.

First, the League of Women Voters has a site called Vote411, a great resource for voter information. One handy feature is a Polling Place Locator that appears to cover most or all of the country. You can also search by state and topic for information about ID requirements, polling place details, provisional voting, contact info for state elections officials, and other useful information.

Also check out our own Voter Protection Page, which is designed to ensure that voters know their rights before going to the polls.

If you have any problems voting, please call our live voter protection hotline at 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683)

More links coming soon.

Courtesy of Political Wire:

6:00 pm
Indiana (East), Kentucky (East)

7:00 pm
Florida (Peninsula), Kentucky (West), Indiana (West), Vermont, Georgia, New Hampshire, Virginia, South Carolina

7:30 pm
North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia

8:00 pm
Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida (Panhandle), Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, Maryland, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas

8:30 pm
Arkansas

9:00 pm

Arizona, Colorado, Lousiana, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nebraska, New York, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin, Wyoming

10:00 pm
Idaho, Iowa, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah

11:00 pm
California, Hawaii, Washington

12:00 am
Alaska

Stay with us for continuous results coverage

Here is a chart I made averaging projections from Charlie Cook, Larry Sabato, Steve Rothenberg, CQ Politics, and Election Projection.

The higher (and bluer) a race is on the chart, the better the chances of it going Democratic. The blue diamonds are seats currently occupied by Democrats, and the red diamonds are seats currently occupied by Republicans.

Click on the chart to see a full-sized version in a new window.

Charts for Senate and governors coming soon.

We are proud to announce two exciting new features. First, we have added projections to the senate, governor, and key house races, with a summary of how some of the top pundits are predicting each race.

Second, for select races, we have a “latest news” component, with race-specific updates from local newspapers and blogs. This part is still a work in progress, but if there are any specific races that you would like to see this feature added to, feel free to let us know. As always, the news comes from other sites and does not necessarily reflect our views.

Last weekend we sent a digital video team to a Labor 2006 walk in Philadelphia to capture the efforts of rank-and-file union volunteers on film. We were lucky enough to have a chance to talk with Joe and Jim, two members of the Transport Workers who are dedicated volunteers with the Labor 2006 program.

Union members like Joe and Jim are the reason we will win in 2006. These guys are passionate, fired up and ready to make a change in this country. And they’re doing more than just talking about change, they’re out there on a Saturday morning knocking on doors and talking to other union members about candidates who will stand up for working families.

Check out what they had to say:

Note: This may not work in Internet Explorer. For optimal viewing experience of this portal, we recommend using Mozilla Firefox.

Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire
As we wait for primary results to come in, please read our primary preview.

Poll Closing Times (all Eastern time):

7 pm: New Hampshire (results), Vermont (results)

8 pm: Delaware (results), Maryland (results)
9 pm: Minnesota (results), New York (results), Rhode Island (results), Wisconsin (results)
10 pm: Arizona (results)

Also check for results at CQ Politics and Hotline On Call.

RI-SEN: Chafee vs. Laffey, check the Providence Journal primary blog.

MD-SEN: Cardin vs. Mfume, check the Baltimore Sun Live Election Roundup.

We are pleased to announce two exciting new features. First, to make it a little easier to find out who has been endorsed by their state labor federation, we added a section under “Election 2006″ called “Endorsed Candidates”. Please note that this list, like the list of candidates, draws from our candidates database, which primarily tracks major party candidates for federal offices and gubernatorial candidates. For other statewide or local office endorsements, please click here for contact information for the state and local labor councils and contact them directly with endorsement questions in their jurisdiction.

Second, in response to several requests for campaign ad tracking, we have added a few new features for this purpose. First, in the state page sidebars, we have linked to the Washington Post’s ad tracking page for that state, which is an excellent resource for tracking ads by state, candidate, subject, and just about any way you could possibly think of to categorize them. Second, we have added a “Campaign Ads” page, which you will see linked to under “Election 2006″, which is an uncategorized roundup of the latest ads pulled from several different sources. Finally, for certain states (at the moment, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Montana, Rhode Island, Maryland, and Arizona - more to be added soon), in the state page sidebar, you will find a section called “Campaign Ads and Videos”, which is a roundup of the latest YouTube videos related to that state’s elections. Check back soon, as we will be adding this feature to more and more state pages. Special thanks to PoliticsTV.com and Firedog Lake for providing some of the content through RSS feeds.

Check back later tonight for primary election results as they come in.

Just wanted to give you a quick update…the portal may run a little more slowly than usual in the next week or so, as we are using the same server to run resource-intensive queries for field counts and other internal projects. We hope to be able to move those operations to another server within the next few weeks. The portal should still work fine during this time, so don’t go away!

Several other blogs have mentioned this site recently. In addition to making the “Breaking Blue Blurb” at mydd.com (another great resource for tracking election news), The Left Coaster called the portal an “absolutely awesome state-based resource for the elections!” The State Roots Project had a post about our site this morning, stating that “if you’re looking for a crib sheet for electoral politics, this site is it.”

Soapblox Chicago also mentioned this site, noting that “it is really something that such a tremendous general political resource was created under the auspices of the AFL-CIO.”

Thank you to everyone who has mentioned the portal on their blogs. Please stop by often!

We are pleased to announce that this site now features pages for all 50 states. In order to make it easier to navigate the list, the state pages will soon be split up by region. Please note that the data and links may not be as comprehensive or as current for states that don’t have competitive elections in 2006, and feel free to point out if anything is out of date (for example, if a candidate listed on our site withdrew or lost a primary).

We are proud to announce a new feature in the sidebar of the state pages.

Let’s use Missouri as an example:

If you expand (press [+/-] the menu on the sidebar that says “News Clippings: Missouri”, you will see archived news stories about Governor, House, and Senate races, as well as polls and endorsements. This information is pulled from a variety of sources and is not a reflection of AFL-CIO positions on anything.