Viewing posts under:
Leon Sit
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Examining California’s “Blueshift”
Many observers falsely assume that California’s electorate gets uniformly bluer between primary and general elections, giving Democratic candidates an edge in competitive races at the congressional and legislative levels. Reality is more complicated than any statewide average admits. Shifts don’t just vary based on political environments; they’re also affected by different demographic and geographic characteristics…
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How Do Young Independents Vote?
In August of 2022, we published an analysis on the partisan affiliation of young voters. Our conclusion was that we were currently in the largest period of sustained age polarization in recent American political history, and that the extreme Democratic lean of young voters was a historical abnormality. But there’s something that we think is…
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Primary Recap: Wisconsin
Primary Recap Wisconsin voters decided the first round of this year’s nonpartisan state Supreme Court election on Tuesday. Judges Janet Protasiewicz (a liberal) and Dan Kelly (a conservative) will advance to a hotly-contested April general election in one of the nation’s top swing states. Although Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates have no formal partisan affiliations, coalitions…
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Another State Supreme Court Battle Brews In Wisconsin
Introduction Few states are as politically divided as Wisconsin, which voted for former President Trump in 2016 by a mere 23,000 votes, and for President Biden in 2020 by an even narrower 20-thousand vote margin. Federally, Wisconsin is one of just a handful of states that elected a bipartisan senate duo to Washington. In the…
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How Has The US Senate Managed To Stay Competitive?
The 2024 Senate map is conventionally challenging for Democrats. Republicans need just two seats to flip the chamber, while Democrats must defend 23. Eight of the states that they are defending were more Republican than the nation in 2020 and three (Montana, West Virginia, and Ohio) backed President Trump twice while voting more than ten…
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Our 2022 Senate Wins Above Replacement Model
During the course of our 2022 postmortems, we at Split Ticket have already quantified the importance of candidate quality in the House of Representatives elections. Today, we extend our model to the 2022 US Senate elections, where the disparities in candidate strength were even more striking. The story of how the Democrats kept the Senate…
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The True Swing from 2020 to 2022
Introduction Understanding the extent to which the national environment changes from election to election is a critical component of post-election analysis. While changes between presidential elections can easily be understood and quantified because of the nearly-uniform election systems in each of the 50 states, the swing from a presidential election to its following midterm involves…
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Estimating 2022’s Generic Ballot
INTRODUCTION At the beginning of the 2022 cycle, one political truism benefited Republicans above all else: the out party had gained ground in all but three midterms since 1862. During that time frame, the House of Representatives had changed hands in 13 such cycles, with the presidential party often suffering double-digit losses. The GOP did…
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9/13 Primary Watchlist
SENATE NEW HAMPSHIRE In the GOP primary, retired Army brigadier general Don Bolduc leads the race to challenge incumbent Democratic senator (and former New Hampshire Governor) Maggie Hassan in November. In a continuation of a theme that the GOP has faced this cycle, Bolduc is likely to be the least electable candidate that the New…
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Alaska: A Deep Dive Into The Last Frontier
BACKGROUND On March 18th, Republican Congressman Don Young passed away, leaving Alaska without a representative in the Congress for the first time since 1973. Young, formerly Dean of the House, enjoyed a half-century tenure, making him the longest serving Republican representative in history. Along with that of former Senator Ted Stevens, Young’s legacy has made…