How do you determine whether a candidate’s performance was good, bad, or simply average? Split Ticket uses demographics, incumbency, partisanship, and financial data to assemble a “Wins Above Replacement” metric quantifying candidate quality. We create a baseline for how fundamentals suggest a race “should have” gone using the above factors, and then evaluate the true margin against the “fundamentals” baseline margin. For instance, if fundamentals suggest that a race should have been D+1, but the Democrat actually won by 4, the Wins Above Replacement score for the seat would be D+3, indicating the Democrat’s margin was 3 points better than expected. Detailed methodology available here
Last refresh: July 7, 2025