Lakshya Jain
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2020 House Wins Above Replacement: Quantifying the Impacts of Incumbency and Spending
Editor’s Note: In December 2024, the Split Ticket WAR model received a major methodological upgrade that resulted in WAR score changes. The findings remain directionally the same, but the updated WAR scores are found here. A while back, we debuted a Wins-Above-Replacement model for the US Senate that tried to assess… Read More
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The White Vote and Educational Polarization
Over the last 30 years, the American electorate has undergone a major realignment, driven primarily by polarization along educational lines. Degree-holding suburban voters, previously a solidly Republican group, have drifted to the left and towards the Democratic party, while white non-college voters have responded in kind by shifting strongly to… Read More
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Re-evaluating 2016 with our Senate WAR model
Among Democrats, arguably no cycle was greeted with as much hope for the Senate map as the one during the 2016 cycle. At the beginning of it all, strategists across the nation thought the majority was theirs for the taking, and Democrats were salivating at the prospects of unseating incumbent… Read More
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House Ratings Update: California
With California’s new maps recently being finalized by its redistricting commission, Split Ticket takes a look at the congressional districts that have been rated as competitive in 2022 by either us or the Cook Political Report. As a reminder, a “tossup” rating means a competitive race with no clear advantage… Read More
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Op-Ed: Who Will Bell The Cat?
There once was a colony of mice that was being attacked by a marauding cat. As the cat began to eat more and more and the mice began shrinking in fear, the colony called an emergency meeting to address the situation. All the mice had some ideas on what to… Read More
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Reassessing 2020 Senate Races With Data-Driven Assessments Of Candidate Quality
When the pre-election discourse around candidate quality pops up, my mind always goes to the famous Arthur Conan Doyle saying of how “it’s easy to be wise after the event”. It sums it up more accurately than any of us would care to admit — pre-election polling numbers, vibes, and… Read More