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Okay, here's the show. Hey y'all, it's the NPR-Politics podcast for Friday, November 4th.

Four days from Election Day. Woohoo. I'm Sam Sanders, Campaign Reporter. I'm

Dementico Montenarro Political Editor. I'm Jessica Taylor Political Reporter. Hey Jessica.

Hey. Nice to have you here today. Thanks Sam. Good to be here. I brought you here for a reason.

You are a resident expert on down-ballot races, and I want to talk about that today,

because it's special fun. It's there. They're exciting people. They matter. They matter a lot.

Yeah, yeah. Probably more than the presidential race in some ways. Yes, yes. We'll get to all of that.

And so before we go there, I want to talk with you, Dementico, about how the race seems to be

tightening a bit, but even before that, I want to talk about a number that I've been a little bit

focused on today. The latest snapshot of the economy. This is the last one we'll get before

the election came out Friday morning. The government found that employers have added 161,000 workers

in October. The official rate of unemployment has dropped to 4.9%. That's a really good number.

In usual election years, that kind of number can be predictive of what party might do well.

And this year, it seems like people care less about this measure.

You know, I think it's just another one of those numbers that people use to try to think about

where the election might go. And I think the thing that really, I think, changed a lot of people's

thinking about the unemployment number was the fact that President Obama got reelected when the

unemployment rate was 7.9%. 2012, right? 2012. And that was the highest in a very long time since

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