By now, you're probably well familiar with the handful of swing states that are all-but-certain to decide who wins the race for control of Congress and the White House this November. But, as I detailed last week, many of those states are also hosting highly competitive elections for their state legislatures too.

Democrats currently control 41 state legislative chambers, while Republicans hold majorities in 56. These races may be lower-profile, but don't mistake their importance; across a myriad of social and economic issues, state legislatures could end up having an even bigger impact on public policy across the country over the next two years than Congress.

Democrats have a shot at flipping state legislative chambers in Arizona (both chambers), Wisconsin (state House) and New Hampshire (both chambers), while Republicans are hoping to regain control of the Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania state Houses, as well as an outside shot at flipping the Minnesota state Senate in a special election. Power is also likely to shift in Alaska's state House, though bipartisan coalitions in both chambers make control of the state legislature particularly difficult to predict.

In New Hampshire and Arizona, if Democrats flip both chambers (and win the governor's race in New Hampshire), they would win a state government trifecta in those states, giving them full control over the legislative process.

The elections analytics site CNalysis rates most of these chambers as toss-ups, though Democrats have a small edge in the New Hampshire state House and slightly larger edge in Minnesota's, while Republicans are slightly favored to keep control of the Wisconsin state Assembly.

Yesterday, 538 unveiled our county benchmarks for the 2024 election. The benchmarks are one of the tools our reporters have used on election nights internally to spot early trends in results and see who's on track for victory. Another is our hypothetical election simulator, which enables users to pick winners in each state and see how your calls update our pre-election presidential election forecast.

For example, while our model starts off giving Kamala Harris a 50-in-100 chance of winning the election, if you call Pennsylvania for her, her chance of winning the majority of Electoral College votes rises to 87 in 100. Add Wisconsin and she's a 94-in-100 favorite. Trump, meanwhile, has a solid Pennsylvania-plus-Sun Belt path to victory. If we assign Michigan and Wisconsin to Harris, but give Pennsylvania and Georgia to Trump, the former President wins 62% of the time.

I will personally be running a version of our what-if simulator throughout election night and reporting the results for you here on this live-blog. That version is a little closer to what you'd get in a full live election night model — it updates our pre-election model not with binary calls about who will win or lose, but with projections in each state from various other sources and models — but we're keeping it on my laptop as a test for future elections.

Our "what-if?" simulator is pretty much an empirical replica of what you'll see anchors and reporters doing on television all night, though. If you take X away from Y, what happens in Z? If Trump is beating his polls in three fast-counting east coast states, is he on track out west, too? Plug your guesses into our interactive as the night goes on and you can figure it out!

Polling in Arizona could hardly be closer. Trump leads Harris by a little over 2 percentage points in 538's final polling average of the state. That puts Arizona's polling about 3 points more Republican than the rest of the country.

Indeed, Arizona was a solidly Republican state until 2020, when it very narrowly gave its 11 electoral votes to Biden, who defeated Trump by just about 11,000 votes — a result that prompted attempts to challenge the outcome of the election. Since then, Arizona has become a hotbed for election denial, including by its 2024 Republican Senate candidate, Kari Lake, who made her name as a stalwart of the pro-Trump MAGA movement.

When it comes to demographics, nearly one in four voters in Arizona are Latino. According to a September Suffolk University/USA Today poll, nearly half of that group, 49%, are registered as Democrats, while around a quarter are registered as Republicans. Overall, Hispanic voters planned to vote for Harris over Trump 57% to 38%, even as the overall electorate in Arizona split the other way, with 43% favoring Harris and 52% favoring Trump. Another smaller but notable group in Arizona is Mormons, who make up 5% of the state's population. While they have historically voted Republican, many have moved away from Trump's rebrand of the party.

Like most of the country, Arizonans name inflation and the economy, immigration, and abortion as their top issues. Abortion and immigration may have special salience for voters this year, as they'll be deciding on ballot measures to tackle each of those issues.

This cycle, both Trump and Harris made appearances on several newer, unconventional media shows, reflecting a broader shift in political communication and raising questions about how democracy functions when potential voters receive information about the candidates from less traditional news sources.

The audience for the shows where Trump appeared, like the Nelk Brothers' Full Send Podcast, This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von, and The Joe Rogan Experience, skew male and right-leaning. For her part, the audiences for shows where Harris appeared are somewhat more mixed, though similarly targeted at demographics she may be stronger with. She spoke with Alex Cooper, host of Call Her Daddy, whose audience leans young and female, but also appeared on All the Smoke with hosts Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, whose audience leans young, male and Black.

But both campaigns are appearing on podcasts for a similar reason — to motivate niche audiences that may be otherwise uninclined to tune into the presidential election, or even vote. In some sense this isn't a new strategy by campaigns. In past presidential elections, candidates visited daytime and late-night talk shows for the same reason, like Bill Clinton's appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show, or John McCain's appearance on The View — precursors to Harris' recent TV appearances, where she drank a beer with Stephen Colbert on the Late Show(), and [appeared with her likeness on SNL — as Trump did with Jimmy Fallon in 2015. It's the same reason that endorsements from non-political figures, from Oprah to Taylor Swift, also matter: They help reach people who aren't seeking out political information and news.

But as Americans' distrust of traditional mainstream media grows and their media habits shift, these unconventional platforms may be increasingly central to presidential campaigns' media strategies, and they may be decisive, electorally.

By appearing on platforms with highly specific demographics, campaigns may build direct rapport with targeted groups, but this also bypasses the broader public discourse traditionally facilitated by mainstream media. As media habits evolve, we're left to wonder: Will this shift enhance democratic participation or deepen polarization?