Category: General Analysis
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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… 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… Read More
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What Was the 2024 Congressional Popular Vote?
Political observers can readily recall the 2024 election outcome, with Trump’s sweep of the swing states being paired with Republicans trailing elsewhere downballot. Despite an arguably-favorable mid-decade redistricting cycle, Republicans lost two seats in November, which halved their House majority. The final tally showed that Kamala Harris stood 1.7% away… Read More
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Democrats May Risk Their Own Tea Party Moment
For keen political observers, the most surprising thing about Donald Trump’s second term probably isn’t the slew of executive orders, the abrupt foreign policy pivots, or even the integration of Elon Musk in government. Instead, to many, it’s how relatively quiet Democrats have been in organizing public opposition. There are… Read More
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The Jewish-American Vote
Analyzing the Jewish Vote is a challenging task. The U.S. Census does not track either Jewish religion or ethnicity, and who “counts” as Jewish is itself a controversial question. For our purposes, we will limit our analysis to 7.5–7.6 million Americans, including 5.8-6.1 million eligible voters (2.4% of the electorate),… Read More
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America’s Demographic Revolution
Last June, we did a deep dive into the 100 largest suburban counties to explore demographic and political change between 2000 and 2020. On the demographic front, we found that all of the suburban counties included in our analysis had become more diverse. This was consistent, but not homogeneous: Asian… Read More
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Our 2024 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) Models
Today, we’re releasing our 2024 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) candidate quality models, for both the House and the Senate. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, here’s a brief primer: our models assemble a “fundamentals”-based outcome estimate for a race by controlling for seat partisanship, incumbency, demographics, and money… Read More
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Who Is Voting For Reform Prosecutors?
Reform prosecutors entered the 2024 election year with significant headwinds: in recent years, they were recalled (Chesa Boudin in San Francisco), defeated (Marilyn Mosby in Baltimore City), and blowback to racial justice has mounted since the George Floyd summer nearly five years ago. But because prosecutors are elected at the… Read More
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How did Split Ticket’s Models Perform in 2024?
At Split Ticket, we try to let data drive all of our decisions and forecasts. That’s why we transitioned from holistic ratings, like those used at the Crystal Ball and the Cook Political Report, to a fully and strictly quantitative model, like FiveThirtyEight’s approach, in 2024. As the cycle completes,… Read More