Viewing posts under:
Category: Modeling
-
The Electoral Impact of Election Denial
With few exceptions, majorities in both parties have historically accepted presidential election results. But that changed in the 2020 Presidential election cycle, when President Trump claimed the election would be stolen amid ballot counting delays. His conspiracy theories reduced Republican confidence in American elections to historic lows and led 147 Congressional Republicans to vote to…
-
A Generational Cliff
Split Ticket has devoted significant coverage to the partisanship of young voters. Whether through analyzing individual-level data in voter files or by aggregating and examining exit poll estimates from the last four decades, the story we find remains consistent: young voters are extremely Democratic, and more importantly, ahistorically so. This analysis can be extended to…
-
The Libertarian Effect
Because American politics is dominated by a two-party system composed of Democrats and Republicans, it’s hardly a surprise that observers tend to neglect Libertarian candidates. After all, minor-party contenders usually raise little money and win very few votes, causing them to have insignificant impacts on general election outcomes. Sometimes, however, Republicans do blame Libertarians for…
-
Modeling the Modern Era’s Congressional Environments
Last year, Split Ticket reviewed House-level election results for the 2020 and 2022 cycles and developed a metric to quantify what a “generic ballot” election result would have looked like. In such an election, every voter is presented with at least a Republican and a Democrat on the ballot at the House level. While it…
-
Our Wisconsin Supreme Court Election Preview
On Tuesday, voters will head to the polls in Wisconsin to choose a new state Supreme Court justice between the Republican-aligned former Supreme Court justice Dan Kelly and the Democratic-aligned judge Janet Protasiewicz for a seat on the state’s Supreme Court. With control of the court on the line and issues such as redistricting, abortion…
-
Where Do Democrats Win White Voters?
For decades, column after column has been written on how diverse America has become. From John Judis and Ruy Teixeira’s 2002 book, The Emerging Democratic Majority, to the 2020 election postmortems, analysts have devoted hundreds of thousands of words to the diversification of the American electorate. These statements are not without merit. America is diversifying,…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Which Key Race Outcomes Might Libertarians Have Changed?
Introduction Much important American electoral discourse revolves around spoiler candidates. In other words, minor contenders (typically representing third parties) who win just enough votes to be accused of preventing major-party candidates from securing majorities in tight races. The use of first-past-the-post voting in most U.S. states makes it easier for observers to blame “spoilers” because…
-
Did Refusing The COVID-19 Vaccine Cost The GOP Any Elections?
Vaccination has historically not been something that diverges along partisan lines in the United States. Until recently, both parties showed roughly equal rates of vaccine enthusiasm and skepticism alike, and Donald Trump’s administration was actually the one that launched Operation Warp Speed, which led to the rapid development of the extremely effective mRNA vaccines that…