Semafor Media – The Cook Political Report, which has tracked the gritty day-to-day of politics for four decades, will put its entire archive online tomorrow, offering a remarkable and nonpartisan window into modern American political history. Charlie Cook launched the publication in 1984 as a simply-printed tipsheet covering political campaigns, and it grew into a irregularly-mailed bound periodical before going digital in 2002. It’s now a solid digital business, with 8 employees and some 70,000 subscribers (face value for a year’s subscription is $350), owned and operated by Cook’s protégée Amy Walter and her wife, Kathryn Hamm. The archive “tells a pretty good story about the evolution of our politics,” said Walter, a Sunday show regular who is also a political analyst for PBS NewsHour. “There’s nothing else out there like this.”

“The Cook Political Report has a 40-year history of providing political professionals with the right analysis to help them invest political capital with confidence. Charlie Cook founded The Cook Political Report in the spring of 1984 with a vision of a nonpartisan newsletter to analyze campaigns, elections and political trends in the United States. Cook pioneered the now-ubiquitous 7-point race rating scale (Solid D or R, Likely D or R, Lean D or R, Toss Up). A recent review of CPR Race Ratings, surveying 1984 through 2022, revealed an impressive record of accuracy: Lean ratings were correct 95% of the time; Likely ratings, 97%; and Solid ratings, 99.9%. In August 2021, Amy Walter took the helm as owner, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief.”