TL;DR
The scale of local elections in odd years is much bigger than you think
Democrats must invest in our talent pipeline from the ground up
Our path forward isn’t complicated, we just need to stay the course
Last week we laid the groundwork for why “off-year” investments in Democratic candidates and campaign infrastructure are so critical — but there’s a whole other piece of this pie we haven’t told you yet.
Which is that plenty of elections happen in “off-years”. We’re talking in the range of thousands.
Fun fact, there are more elections – and open seats on the ballot – in 2025 than there were in 2024.
Here’s how. Sure, even-numbered years are indisputably more election-heavy because they include federal races (like Congress and President) and many state elections (like state legislatures and governors) that fall on the same timeline. But local races – like school boards, city councils, and even mayors offices – are always in-cycle and happen every month of every year.
While it’d be difficult to track every election happening every month, at every level, across the country, we can get a sense of the scale we’re looking at with some basic numbers.
In 2024, PoliEngine reported that 96.2% of elected officials hold local offices, including 135,531 city council members and mayors, 95,000 school board members (which Ballotpedia says are majority off-year elections), and 58,818 county officers. No matter how those are spliced and diced throughout the federal election cycle, that volume alone should make it easy to grasp that we’re never in the off-season of local elections.
That means that there’s constant opportunity for investment and growth, and constant risk for ceding ground. In any given month, we could secure hundreds of seats for progressive candidates, or lose them to MAGA enablers. That sentiment alone should be enough to convince us all of the importance of off-year investments and sustained, hard work.
We’ve talked before about how many of these local seats act as a buffer and a safety net between the MAGA administration and local communities. When Trump cuts the Department of Education, school boards are the last line of defense to save children's curriculum and school funding. When Trump targets cities facing tragedy like Los Angeles, mayors step in to deliver necessary resources.
Federal races might set the national political tone and dictate some sweeping decisions, but we can’t undervalue what local leaders are able to deliver to their communities and protect them from.
Now that the impact is clear, here’s another reason off-year races matter so much: They’re the launching pad for breakout political stars and our future party leaders. No doubt you’ve found yourself rolling your eyes at a claim of discovery of the “next Obama” (we’ll believe it when we see it). But this is still a proven strategy for building our political talent pipeline – 45% of our current Congress previously served on state legislatures. That’s the talent pool we’re willfully evaporating when we don’t invest in local races every year.
We now know what happens when we give ex-reality TV stars their first political office in the Presidency. So here’s an alternative: develop star political figures that also have a deep understanding of governing and legislating means — starting with those who step up to serve their communities and run at the local level.
The path forward isn’t complicated: invest in recruiting and training down-ballot candidates every year for long-term results. It just requires a sustained effort and commitment. We must develop budding leaders early, pour resources into local races year round, and be patient enough for the payoffs down the road.
We’re always doing that work here at NDTC by training Democrats to run for any office in the country. One Democratic leader in Montana, Nick Lockeridge, said, "Our state party just started a program to work with Democratic candidates running for hyper-local offices — city, county, etc. — and as such we did not have the budget to provide an in-depth training to this new crop of candidates and all of our grassroots supporters. In stepped the NDTC to help teach those A-Z basics of how to run a good campaign at any level. Thanks to this partnership our bench is growing."
If you’re ready to get to work with us, we’d love to see you at one of our live trainings or asynchronous courses. Our website is always stockpiled with more free resources.
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