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The Pendulum Effect
In 2025, two governors are retiring — Republican Glenn Youngkin in Virginia and Democrat Phil Murphy in New Jersey, and their seats are up for grabs. Both Virginia and New Jersey are similarly blue: Kamala Harris won them both by 6. Yet, at the time of writing, Virginia’s race looks like a Democratic blowout, while Read more
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What’s Next: Split Ticket Partners With The Argument
If you happen to be following us on Twitter, you probably already know the big news: we’ve agreed on an exclusive partnership with The Argument. While Split Ticket and its website will still continue to exist as normal, we will be publishing the bulk of our analysis there for the foreseeable future. As part of Read more
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Deconstructing WAR
For years, we’ve talked about candidate quality at Split Ticket, and about the inferences we draw from our modeling. Broadly, these are conclusions that are in step with what most political professionals and survey practitioners alike express: moderates generally tend to do better, and that gender and race don’t strongly tilt the playing field in Read more
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Candidate Quality And The Democrats’ 2026 House Playing Field
Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, Democrats are busy sizing up the weak points in the slim Republican majority to maximize their chances of taking back the House. And if history is any indicator, they have ample reason to be optimistic about their chances in the lower chamber. Whether it’s the “iron law” of midterm Read more
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Texas Republicans’ Oldest Trick In The Book
Democrats’ political woes just got darker. Recently, the Texas Legislature reconvened to reconfigure Democratic-leaning congressional districts to elect Republicans. The New York Times reports that anywhere between 2 and 5 Democratic-held seats in Texas are vulnerable, and President Donald Trump has instructed the legislature to target 5 Democratic incumbents. Considering the currently-close makeup of the Read more
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How New England’s House Democrats Outperformed Kamala Harris
Ticket-splitting has hit record lows in recent years. In 2024, the number of “crossover districts” in the House dropped to just sixteen — with thirteen of them electing a Democrat to Congress despite voting for Trump. Growing political polarization has made it extraordinarily difficult for down-ballot candidates to draw from dwindling cross-party support and win Read more
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Turnout In The 2024 Election
Turnout may be the political world’s favorite buzzword. If you’ve ever heard a campaign say that “it’ll all come down to turnout,” you’ll know it has long since become a cliche. Whether they win or lose, candidates often credit (or curse) turnout. Case in point: the 2024 presidential race. Many observers pegged poor Democratic turnout Read more
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The Real Reason Democrats Can’t Compete For 60 Senate Seats
It’s no secret that the Senate is an extraordinarily difficult and uphill challenge for Democrats — in order to win the chamber in 2026, the party will likely need to flip at least two of Texas, Ohio, Iowa and Florida. Meanwhile, their hopes of competing in 60 seats, like they once regularly did and like Read more
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How Democrats Won Wisconsin In 2025: Turnout.
If you looked at the landslide Democratic victory in the state Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, you might think that public opinion had swung sharply and massively against Donald Trump and the GOP, despite Elon Musk’s eight-figure investment in the state. But while persuasion certainly explains part of the victory, the full story is not Read more
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Wisconsin Republicans Have An Off-Year Turnout Problem
On Tuesday, Wisconsin voters will elect a Supreme Court justice in an election that could decide the ideological balance of the court until 2028. Although we will not be releasing a model for this race, the early vote data we have extensively analyzed and modeled suggests Democratic-aligned liberal judge Susan Crawford is a clear favorite Read more
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Where Should Democrats Run Independents?
The Senate’s rural bias has put Democrats at a severe disadvantage in the chamber. This has been compounded by the rise of polarization, which cost Democrats the red states of Montana, West Virginia, and Ohio in 2024 — and what’s worse, there currently doesn’t seem to be a plausible path back to consistently winning states Read more
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Are Moderates More Electable?
Recently, a study from Stanford’s Adam Bonica came out, suggesting that moderation generally has little to do with electability, and that parties should seek to appeal to their base voters first and foremost in order to win elections. I have a lot of respect for Adam, and I won’t cast aspersions on his work. But Read more
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