# Cook Political Report The **Cook Political Report** (since 2021 formally *The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter*) is the independent, subscription newsletter whose seven-point race ratings — Solid, Likely, Lean and Toss Up — are the default shorthand for competitiveness in American House, Senate and gubernatorial elections. It is the rating this vault's race pages cite most often; see the [[2026 Senate Races Hub]] and [[2026 House Races Hub]]. ## Origins and ownership **Charlie Cook** (Charles E. Cook, Jr., a Georgetown graduate who left a Capitol Hill job to start it) founded the publication in March 1984 as *The National Political Review*, renaming it *The Cook Political Report* later that year. He was editor and publisher until **August 1, 2021**, when **Amy Walter** took over as publisher and editor-in-chief and assumed ownership. Cook remains a contributor with a weekly column. The *New York Times* has called it "a newsletter that both parties regard as authoritative"; Cook shared the American Political Science Association's Carey McWilliams Award in 2010. The current editorial team is Walter; **David Wasserman** (elections analyst, House and redistricting); **Jessica Taylor** (Senate and governors); **Erin Covey** (House); and managing editor **Carrie Dann**. The Report also publishes the **Cook Partisan Voting Index** (Cook PVI, a 2026 edition is current), runs the Battleground District Project — a survey collaboration with New River Strategies (Democratic) and GS Strategy Group (Republican) — and maintains a redistricting tracker that the vault's [[Redistricting Timeline 2025-2026]] draws on. ## Why it is in the vault Cook is not a partisan actor, and that is the point: its ratings are the neutral instrument against which the vault's claims about the 2026 cycle can be checked. Two uses recur. First, **race ratings** on the individual House and Senate pages are, unless otherwise stated, Cook's. A rating shift (Likely R → Lean R, say) is a dated event worth logging because both parties' donors and committees allocate money against it. Second, **Cook's own reading of the cycle**. On **September 1, 2026** Cook wrote that with 64 days to Election Day, Republicans "should brace themselves: The three most plausible outcomes are that it will be bad, really bad, or truly horrible" — a line Heather Cox Richardson put at the top of her September 3 letter and that circulated widely as the House abandoned its September schedule (see [[Mike Johnson]]). It sits alongside [[G. Elliott Morris]]'s coalition-collapse analysis and the [[Dummymander]] argument as the analyst-side evidence for a Democratic wave. > [!note] A single voice, dated > The "bad, really bad, or truly horrible" column is Cook's personal column, not a Report rating change. Treat it as one experienced analyst's judgment on September 1, 2026, not as a forecast the publication has issued. ## See Also - [[2026 Midterm Elections]] · [[2026 Senate Races Hub]] · [[2026 House Races Hub]] - [[G. Elliott Morris]] · [[Strength In Numbers]] — the data-journalism counterpart - [[Dummymander]] — the redistricting-backfire thesis Cook's ratings are used to test - [[Redistricting Timeline 2025-2026]]