Legislative District Index

Liveblog: Burlington Democratic Mayoral Caucus

2011-11-13T14:21:00.001-05:00

We are back!

The LDI is returning today to cover the Burlington, Vermont mayoral caucus. Sorry for the long hiatus (most of which I will explain during the course of the liveblog), but I could not simply sit back and not involve myself in what is sure to be an awesome afternoon of old-school politicking, as four solid candidates battle it out to receive 50%+1 of the hundreds that are streaming in to the caucus.

The livestream of the event is right here: http://www.cctv.org/live_events

I'll be providing updates on Twitter all afternoon, so feel free to bounce between checking the site and checking on Twitter.

I've done a lot of analysis of this race, dating back to last summer, that I'm excited to share with this audience - I hope you're equally interested!

3:15 PM
Speech's are currently underway, with State Representative Jason Lorber and Miro Weinberger having already spoken. Bram Kranichfeld will be nominated next - the room is absolutely packed with people, every pan of the camera is a little more amazing. Back this summer, I started taking a look at what this mayoral campaign was going to look like, through the lens of my LDI research. Over the course of this afternoon, while we wait for speeches to be made and votes to be cast & counted, I'm going to publish the work bit-by-bit, as well as touching on the candidates themselves. To know where we are headed, I think it is really important to look at where we've been. Burlington has not elected a Democratic mayor in two decades, and there's good reason for the results - the Burlington Progressive Party has managed to operate as the face of the left in city politics for the past 20 years, and Democratic candidates haven't been able to grab a foothold. Let's start by looking at what happened back in 2009:

Before moving towards Montpelier elections, we will start with the closest comparison – the past mayoral results. Below, we have provided the results for the past two elections, broken down by ward. For 2009, independent candidate Dan Smith has been omitted, as his votes were fairly evenly distributed amongst the three candidates following his elimination, and his candidacy did not appear to represent any one ideological part of the spectrum. Instead, his campaign support seemed drawn from younger affluent Burlingtonians. While he does not factor in to our conclusion, he did receive a nontrivial number of votes for the office – had a Democratic candidate been able to capture the imagination of his supporters, they would have had a whole other pool of support to draw from. Finally, while both campaigns were conducted under Instant Runoff Voting, we’ve only included the first-round results below, as they are most relevant to the new electoral system that has been implemented since 2009.

In 2009, City Council President and State Representative Kurt Wright captured the first round of the mayoral election just shy of the 40% needed to win the office – his victory in the opening round but subsequent loss as a result of Instant Runoff Voting procedure led to the repeal of the election format. At the time of the election, plenty of questions were all ready being raised about the Mayor’s job performance, but his incumbency and support among his base made the campaign unattractive to a Democratic contender. While city council member Andy Montroll joined the field, headlines were dominated with stories about the momentum behind Rep. Wright’s candidacy, and his endorsements from both council progressives like Jane Knodell, and business-based Democrats who had supported the candidacy of Hinda Miller three years prior.

Since we don't have house district breakdowns available, we're going to assess party performance relative to what is expected for the entire city. In the first round of 2009 voting, Kurt Wright came up just shy of the 40% mark, outperforming LDI expectations by 13%. Even in Wright's worst wards, he was still hitting around what the citywide average should be for Republican performance. If Democrats had retained half of those voters, under the new rules Montroll would've been headed into the runoff in good position, possibly even in first – instead, he was not able to lock down voters on either side, and missed out on the final round. In 2012, if Kiss runs for re-election, a Democrat who holds Wright's numbers down could break the 40% threshold outright, given expectations that Kiss is likely to underperform his previous two elections.

Moving forward, the 2009 race should serve as an example of the baseline support a Democrat can enjoy in a citywide run, as 200 voters choosing Montroll over Kiss could have led to Mayor Montroll at the end of the IRV process. A campaign able to generate any sort of public excitement or momentum could better this performance, and leave the candidate in an incredibly enviable position.

3:45 PM
First round predictions:
I think there is really one central dynamic in this race: Tim Ashe vs. Democrats. Among the more hardcore politicos who tend to dominate caucuses, I have a hard time believing that they are pursuaded by Tim Ashe's rhetoric regarding uniting the left - in Montpelier his votes on things like changing the date of the state primary were not exactly the kind of Democratic team player votes you would expect.

But it's an open caucus, and I expect him to have the largest vote share on the first vote. My sense is that the voting will shake down like this:

First Round: Ashe, Kranichfeld, Weinberger, Lorber
Second Round: Ashe, Kranichfeld, Weinberger, Lorber
Third Round: Ashe, Kranichfeld, Weinberger
Fourth Round: Kranichfeld, Ashe

On the specific candidates strategies for getting 50%+1:

Ashe: Honestly I think Ashe's best hope is that he wins on the first ballot (which seems incredibly unlikely given the turnout), or that he is pushed past 50% following Lorber's exit, given that he was able to court a fair number of progressives early in the game when he was the only candidate out there. As every round goes on, he stands a less and less likely chance to be the victor. The main problem is that Kranichfeld - who appears to have become the choice of progressive Democrats - is also the candidate with party stalwarts, who will vote against Ashe's in pretty much every imaginable scenario.

Kranichfeld: At the beginning of the campaign I would not have been so confident that Kranichfeld ended up being the candidate int his position, but it seems as though he has been able to edge out Lorber as the party favorite, while also drawing in support from the young progressive crowd. Bram doesn't have a big weakness after the second ballot - if him and Tim are in first and second, I think it pretty easily becomes his race to lose.

Weinberger: Miro's relying on a turnout that I just don't think is going to be there, and his campaign is probably going to hit some of the same hurdles that Dan Smith ran into. A lot of people like his vision, but he's an untested candidate and in what is going to be a hyperpartisan affair, I'm not sure his candidacy plays well. His only hope is to be 2nd on the first ballot behind Tim Ashe, and hope to pull in the majority of votes from the first candidate out.

Lorber: I think Jason's odds are the worst of the folks here, and I expect him or Miro to finish last on the first vote... but he also has the kind of consensus approval from people that with a little luck he could pass the hurdle Andy Montroll never did, and wind up going from 3rd to 1st. I think it's an uphill climb, but we'll be able to know how it will all shake down once the first round votes are in.

4:45 PM

Well, this is exactly the kind of surprise that was needed to mess up my predictions. Miro Weinberger's strong first round showing has to have his campaign excited, and rightly so - he has now become the defacto challenger to Ashe. Ashe's campaign has to be similarly happy, but finding 150 votes to get them across the line could prove extremely difficult.

So, where do Lorber's votes go? Had Ashe & Kranichfeld come across the line 1-2, I was fairly confident that Kranichfeld could bring in a pretty high percentage of Lorber's base, with the party label making the difference between two candidates that have city council ties and are equally palatable to progressives. Weinberger is less of an obvious foil against Ashe, but all he needs to do is hold his support, and hope that he and Bram pick up equal shares of the Lorber crowd. If Ashe doesn't pick up the least number of votes from Jason, I think his campaign is going to feel good about the final round.

Bram has to woo Jason supporters in a major way right now. The gap between himself and Weinberger isn't insignificant - he needs to take well over half of Jason's votes, or hope that a candidate starts leaking support, to stay alive in this race. I think that's too tall of a task, and Miro's folks have to be ready to make the case that he's going to be the true Democratic candidate in the final round of voting.

7:23 PM

Well, we're not done here. There is currently a recount going on to see if one or two votes may have been missed that would switch this outcome - 542 would have allowed either of the candidates to be the winner. This is pretty crazy - the best I can say is that Miro seems to have made the case to Democrats in enough numbers to pull it off, but when dealing with these quesitons around the edges it is pretty difficult.

What's sketchy is the strategy for a possible next caucus. I think you can sense the mistrust over Ashe's campaign, and whether or not he truly is a Democrat running for mayor. Weinberger's best bet would be to play on that and make sure that the crowd who votes next time around believes he's the only Democratic candidate in the Democratic primary...

At the same time, that would be horrific for unity, and would probably guarantee Kurt Wright becomes the next mayor of Burlington. They're going to have really thread the needle on this one.

We're in Connecticut!

2011-08-26T19:17:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to provide a quick update to our readers so that people know where we have been the past few days. There has been two major reasons nothing has been going across this website. The first is that I've relocated back down to New Haven for the school year - that move-in is complete, and I've tried to put together a set-up specifically for covering these kinds of races. The hurdle I have encountered is the second thing that has kept me from putting up new content on the site. My Macbook Pro's hard drive seems to be on its final act, and so I've been racing to backup my files and try to fix my computer situation. That isn't resolved yet - I'm still trying to figure out the best way to do that, and so until that situation gets fixed, I'm not going to be back to my full posting capacity. Regardless, I can't wait to get these problems squared away so that we can cover some of the really intriguing stories out there right now.

Thanks for your continued support,
-Matt

LDI Liveblog: Wisconsin Senate Recalls, Round 2

2011-08-16T19:20:00.015-04:00

Welcome to tonight's Legislative District Index liveblog. We've been spending all week fine-tuning the LDI projection machine since it's debut performance last week, and we are excited to kick off our second election night liveblog. Tonight, Democrats have to go on the defensive in the 12th & 22nd Wisconsin Senate districts, where Republicans mounted recall efforts in response to the recalls brought against six Republican state senators. This isn't the first Democratic recall election - Sen. Dave Hansen easily bested his Republican opponent David VanderLeest a few weeks ago, but tonight's elections figure to be much tighter than that contest.

I previewed the two races in greater depth yesterday, but as a brief highlight, Democrats are fairly heavily favored to maintain control of the 22nd district, which is marginally Democratic, but nowhere near as Republican as the districts that Democrats just narrowly lost last week. The 12th district figures to be the real marquee contest, as polling has showed Democratic incumbent Jim Holperin with anywhere from a 2% to 14% edge of his tea-flavored challenger.

Tonight's elections cannot change control of the chamber, but what they certainly could do is provide a messaging boost to either side. Republicans tried to claim a huge victory last week despite losing two seats - striking out tonight might force them to eat their words a bit more, and propel Democrats whose inflated expectations were popped last week when they failed to flip the chamber. On the other hand, a Republican victory might be the nail in the coffin of the recall saga. Regardless of the outcome, we will be here all night giving you the best information, and hopefully providing you with some good news.

9:00 PM

Here are tonight's first projections - the model is working off the assumption that the shift we're going to see towards Democrats will be the same as last week - of course, as precincts come in, we'll see those numbers move.

9:23 PM
With only one precinct in, it appears a little early to draw any conclusions... and by that I mean literally one precinct is totally worthless to base decisions off on.

9:38 PM
We've now got a handful of precincts in, appears rural at this point. Don't read too much into the 22nd - it is still early, and with so much of the district in just one county, there aren't too many data point for the district to work with at this stage. In the 12th however, early news appears to be good - while it hasn't made a dent in the projection yet, numbers are improving thus far for Sen. Holperin at the kind of level he would need to claim victory.

9:45 PM
More numbers coming in from the 12th district, and thus far all the movement has been positive - in every county that is reporting, Sen. Holperin is performing at the level he needs to in order to win, and that is reflected in the movement of the LDI projection. Meanwhile, projections are still off in the 22nd district, where the conservative portions of Kenosha that have reported are preventing the system to give accurate data yet - another 10 precincts and it should be dialed in much closer.

9:57 PM
People are talking on Twitter about the 22nd having been called by the Associated Press - I haven't seen that yet, but I'll update the information the moment I know more. The LDI is seeing progress in the 22nd, where things are moving back towards where they are expected to be, but in the 12th, Marathon and Marientte are not where Sen. Holperin needs them to be, and that movement is reflected in the slight change in projections.

10:04 PM
For the first time tonight, the LDI is projecting that Sen. Holperin will win re-election in the 12th district, on the back of his great performance thus far in Onieda County. Kenosha still remaining a mystery at this point, but the news from the 12th has to be promising given the relative liberality of the 22nd in comparison.

10:14 PM
Numbers still looking good for Holperin in the 12th, even though his lead has receded in some places. In the 22nd, things are still perplexing for Wirch - with no indication of what parts of Kenosha are in, it is really difficult to say whether we should start being seriously concerned. Way too much of the vote remains out there.

10:18 PM
For the first time tonight we have both Democrats now ahead, and Wirch may be about to take this one across the finish lines, if precincts keep looking the way those last few did. Holperin, on the other hand, has begun slowing down, and if his Onieda numbers continue to dwindle, will go back to being on the other end of our projections - let's hope it doesn't continue.

10:28 PM
We are now confident that Robert Wirch will be returned to the Wisconsin State Senate by the voters of Senate District 22. Holperin remains in the balance however, with recent numbers continuing to do more to inspire fear rather than confidence.

10:40 PM
We are really just sitting and waiting to see more from SD12 at this stage. I was talking on Twitter earlier that if Holperin can outperform his district at the rate Wirch outperformed his, than he will be safe, but as Wirch's numbers continue to take off, he may not even have to do that well to retain his seat. Still, all the recent movement in the 12th has been making victory tougher, rather than easier - we're going to be biting our fingernails for a while here.

10:48 PM
The numbers in Vilas County are great for Holperin, and I'm getting pretty close to calling this one a night - finishing out Onieda County will be the real end of the whole process. But right now, feeling a little more bullish about Holperin's odds.

10:52 PM
We are calling this one for Jim Holperin - data has come in for enough counties for us to be confident that Sen. Holperin will not only defend his seat, but outperform his 2008 election - and that is nothing to sneeze at.

11:02 PM
We are calling it a night - two great wins for Dems, and by excellent margins. We'll recap tomorrow - enjoy the rest of the night!

Democrats Favored in Final Recalls - But Don't Hold Your Breath

2011-08-15T11:06:00.001-04:00

This time last week, everyone was getting their hopes up over the possibility of a big night for Wisconsin Democrats in the first round of recall elections. While Democrats scored two important victories, it ultimately was not enough to satisfy the inflated expectations that had spread within the progressive community, and left many, myself included, suggesting alternate routes that Wisconsin Democrats should take if they want to successfully remove Governor Scott Walker from power. While it is too early to tell if any wholesale strategy changes are going to happen, tomorrow night will provide an excellent opportunity for Democrats to see how much their base was shaken by the losses last week, as two Democratic state senators will face recall challenges tomorrow night. We will be here liveblogging the results as they come in, same as last week, but before you head into the election night fray, here are some things you need to know about the two seats up for grabs.

The Districts
The 12th District is going to be the real showdown tomorrow night. Senator Jim Holperin was representing the most Republican district held by a Democrat until Jessica King's win last week, and he didn't do it in a landslide either; Holperin's 2008 campaign for an open state senate seat prevailed with only 51% of the vote. To put his district into further perspective, Holperin's seat is split between Sean Duffy's 7th Congressional District and Reid Ribble's 8th Congressional District, two seats that flipped in favor of Republicans last cycle.

Holperin doesn't have some of the advantages one would typically like to see in a race like this one. His Senate race in 2008 was his only campaign for elected office in the past 20 years, having served in the state assembly back in the early 80's. While he held an appointed position in former Governor Jim Doyle's administration, I would challenge any of my readers to name their state's respective Tourism Secretary of the top of their head.

What Holperin doesn't bring in electoral background he does make up for in support. He's earned the endorsement of the NRA in this recall, backing that is really vital in a seat like this that is more than capable of electing a conservative. Another thing in his favor is his opponent, Kim Simac, who is of the firebreathing variety. While her message has been effective in getting the Republican base to do the legwork needed on this recall, I'm not sure how well that language is going to play when it comes to converting people who voted for Holperin last time around to change colors and kick him out. Using the raw 50/50 data from the LDI model, this race would have a slight Republican advantage, but to calculate the projections for these two races, we are also adding the average swing we observed last week - 3% in the Democrats favor - to the model. The result is that the LDI is projecting this race out to a nearly 50-50 tossup, and I'd say intuitively, that seems about fair - there is really no way to project how people in the district have reacted to last week's results.

The 22nd District won't get as much time, simply because it really doesn't need it. The district, represented by Senator Robert Wirsch, is substantially more democratic than his colleagues, and he appears to face a lower-tier challenger. The LDI projection model is pointing to a 55-45 victory for him, but I wouldn't be surprised if that figure ends up being low - we may be looking at a result closer to what happened in the 30th district general, where Senator Dave Hansen really beat up on Republican challenger David VanderLeest and took two-thirds of the vote.

Today, Daily Kos Elections released the results of polls done by PPP this weekend that show double-digit margins for both Democratic candidates, and with their record in the recalls thus far, I would be inclined to trust their numbers. That said, my intuition is that they have located the high water mark for Sen. Holperin, where as Sen. Wirsch may have room to expand that lead.

We will be back tomorrow night, cranking up the LDI projection engine and hopefully watching two Democratic senators coast to victory to close off the Wisconsin summer recalls in style.

Why We Won in Wisconsin

2011-08-10T11:35:00.001-04:00

Last night's liveblog was wildly successful for the Legislative District Index - while we blew by our single-day page views record, the real first version of the LDI projection model was surprisingly on target. Consider the 10:48 update, which I have reposted below: at this early stage of the night, we had called all six races correctly, and other than the 18th, where a computation error in the model was inflating Democratic numbers, we were within 3% of the margin of victory. I'll be making a few changes to improve the model prior to next Tuesday's results, but as a projection model, I was incredibly impressed with the LDI's performance.

However, the real story I want to tell is about what happened last night at the polls in Wisconsin. I don't think there is any question that the narrative forming last night and solidified today is that Democrats "came up short". Given what has been talked about, I don't think that is an unfair label to put on last night. The real problem is that when you look at the actual numbers, last night was incredibly successful.

Expectations were managed horribly for last night's recall elections, and for that matter, the entire anti-Walker electoral movement. A state supreme court election should have never been allowed to become a referendum on Walker - Democrats had to split energy and focus on a race that was not as important as the legislatives races last night. On top of that, the notion that we were going to really stick it to Republicans tonight and pick up four, five, or all six of these seats had no grounding in reality, but became way too commonplace among people on the left.

Consider the following - Senator-elect Jessica King will represent the most conservative Senate district held by a Democrat in the state of Wisconsin - a district that she came up short in during the 2008 wave, in an off-year special election. That is a huge achievement. Had we won the other seats that were up in the recall, nearly a third of the Wisconsin Senate Democratic Caucus would have come from districts that are typically safe for Republicans. There isn't a state where Democrats regularly win seats like these.

The other important takeaway from the above chart should be the Republicans listed above those who were on the ballot last night. Those are the Senators whose seats we could have flipped. If we take the D+3% shift we measured last night, and apply it to those races, we would have won four of those seven races - and that is without considering that in more moderate districts, the Republican base might not have been large enough to combat the Democratic surge. But we did not get to flip those seats last night because we lost in 2010. State legislative elections are an inigma - some people talk about them like they are the hardest things to fight against the current in, others think they are the easiest seats to flip. If you took 25% of the money, energy, and effort that was spent on these recalls, and focused it into those 2010 State Senate races, my guess is tonight we would be talking about a Democratic-controlled Senate - we may have never even needed the recall elections to get there.

The point I am trying to hammer home is that these races are critically important, and it seems that Republicans have been much better at nationally at maintaining focus on state legislatures and building their bench to be prepared the moment that the national mood sours on their opponents. Democrats need to create vehicles that can respond just as quickly in the other direction, so that we can continue to have state piloting the progressive policies of tomorrow.

If Democrats are considering pushing on with the recall strategy, I would offer this suggestion: forget about Scott Walker - a losing recall campaign will only embolden him, and quite frankly I don't see how he would lose in such a contest - wait until he's up for re-election, and punish him them. Instead, circulate petitions in the 5th, 17th, 21st, and 23rd districts. These are seats Democrats will be competitive in without any sort of outside push, and if they can maintain just the slightest bit of outside momentum (which, I would tend to believe that continued Koch support to Wisconsin Republicans is sure to do), they'll be able to be twice as competitive as they were tonight, and successfully grab control from the Senate Republicans.

But Democrats have a big enough task on the table already - defending their two Senate seats that are up for recall next week. Robert Wirsch in the 22nd district shouldn't be in any real risk - his district is closest to Kapanke's, without having the incumbency advantage on the Republican side. Jim Holperin, however, represents a districts that is only slightly less conservative than the Republican block challenged last night, and has a challenger in Kim Simac whose politics are regressive enough that a victory could really sap all the energy out of this movement. Don't lose faith - hit the phones, drive out if you can, and make sure the summer recalls end on our terms.

LDI Liveblog: Wisconsin Senate Recalls, Round 1

2011-08-09T20:57:00.017-04:00

FINAL UPDATE - 12:48 AM

With election returns completely stalled in Senate District 8 for some time now, and no indication of that changing anytime soon, we're calling it a night here at the LDI Newsdesk. Tonight was a victory for Democrats, no mistake about it. These were seriously conservative districts - Senate District 18, where Democrats successfully recalled State Sen. Randy Hopper, is the 8th most conservative district in Wisconsin. A lot of money poured into these races, and the fake Dem strategy really appears to have paid dividends for Republicans - the extra time they added to the race may have been just enough to combat the narrative. But Democrats have picked up two important seats, have a slim chance of picking up a third, and have demonstrated that the Democratic machine can still turn out voters when they are revved up. The D+3 shift we saw tonight would not be enough to knock off Governor Scott Walker however, and so if Wisconsin Dems are serious about mounting a recall effort against him next year, they are going to really have to be on top of their game, as this shift would've still let Walker win by 3%. We'll have a more complete reflection tomorrow, and be sure to bookmark this page for next week, when Democrats have to play defense in two recall elections. Lastly, this evening was our most successful night, smashing all of our traffic records - thanks for relying on the LDI for your legislative election coverage, and please let us know what we can do to make the experience even better in the future.

---

Welcome to the first ever Legislative District Index liveblog. Tonight, we're going to providing minute-by-minute coverage of the election returns in the six contested Wisconsin senate seats. it will be fun to get back into the liveblog business - last time I was a part of one was when I covered that odd 10PM tweet from the White House about the President addressing the nation.

First of all, I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you to also open up a page for Daily Kos Elections tonight - I've been going there for all my liveblog needs for some time, and the folks over at SSP Labs have put together some incredible data, which I would strongly encourage everyone take a look at before the polls close.

I'm going to be focusing tonight on projecting election results using the Legislative District Index formula. In the past, I've written about the six senate districts that are going to be contested tonight, but just as a friendly reminder, here's the Wisconsin Senate scores, with the contested seats shaded in grey.

As I've said from the start, this is a serious uphill battle for Democrats, were this any other election. But tonight's election has little precedent - never has a state legislative campaign been conducted with such fervor and outside attention. Part of what we'll be measuring tonight is the progressive shift - the percentage swing we see towards the Democratic candidates away from LDI's expectations. I say progressive because this is fundamentally a campaign being waged over progressive values - collective bargaining, education, progressive taxation, and social programs. The other part that is worth taking note of is the fact that there will be a progressive shift - all the polling of these senate races thus far has shown them to be extremely close, which compared to what results the LDI would project.

So, keep up to date on this space - as soon as the first results trickle in, our projections will pour out

9:07 PM
Polls have been closed for almost 10 minutes now, though there are plenty of reports on Twitter of people still in line to vote - they'll all be allowed to. May be a while before we see our first results. Projections will be going here, at the bottom of the page chronologically, but I'll also be updating the top with a "big board" of results - just need some preliminary numbers to put those up!

9:38 PM
It has taken a while for results to start coming in, but here is what we have so far. Note that there hasn't been enough precincts in District 8 for my model to start using it - remember though that even now, there is a TON of noise in the model, as so few districts are in - I wouldn't take these results to be indicative of anything, but I want to show everyone how I'll be presenting numbers tonight.

9:57 PM
A few more results have trickled in, and now there are numbers for all 6 districts. Right now we're seeing a 10% Republican shift in the districts we've surveyed, but keep in mind - we are expecting rural, conservative areas to report first. If turnout was as robust as some had said, then we could be waiting a while to get to the Democratic pockets in all of these counties.

10:11 PM
Starting to look REALLY ugly for Democrats, as a considerable number of votes are in, and some of these races aren't even close. Republicans are outperforming their LDI score in 4 of the 6 races, the exact opposite of the scenario that Democrats needed. Things need to change, and fast, for there to be any hope of a positive result this evening.

10:22 PM
The game is changing slightly - now I've got Dems outperforming LDI #'s in 4 of the 6 districts, but only enough to win two of the seats (8 & 32). Still, there is reason for optimism.

10:33 PM
Two of the six races have now been officially called for the GOP. What is troubling at this hour is the fact that overall, we are measuring absolutely 0 shift towards Democrats in the recall, which really has been totally unthinkable this entire campaign. Dems continue to outperform LDI scores in 4 districts, and are increasing their margins, but our projections still show 4 nailbiters. The one thing to be hopefuly about is that later returns in 14 continue to favor Dems, and in 18, a huge number of votes aren't out yet in the strongest Democratic area of the district. If there is a Democratic surge within that base, we might be in for a twist.

10:48 PM
A few things have shifted since the last update - the model is now really excited about the pickup opportunity in the 18th district - the only problem is that so much of the vote is still out. The 14th remains close, while the 8th is beginning to drift away from Dems reach. Also, in the 32nd, keep in mind that Kapanke has been seriously outperforming his Senate seat for some time now - so while the shift is only 1% from the LDI score, it is a significant flip from his performance in previous elections.

11:04 PM
A third race has been called for the Republicans, and now things aren't looking good. I can't see any way that the race in the 8th turns around in the Democrats favor - there isn't any part of the district where Democratic numbers seem to have surged. Instead, we appear to be waiting on the proverbial "super turnout delay" that would wind up with us finding a much higher percentage of voters from the remaining precincts than my model imagines. Right now the total shift is only at +2 - incredibly disappointing.

11:11 PM
So we are all down to 2 races - 8 & 18. In 18, the numbers look much more promising - not only does my model project a victory, but across the board Democratic performance has been significantly up. In Senate District 8 however, I'm just not seeing those kind of numbers - we need serious blue ballots to come out of Milwaukee, and that kind of advantage hasn't been established thus far.

11:20 PM
I'm just not feeling all that optimistic about the 8th - I don't have the numbers to back it up. I think the 18th is a lock now - I'd project victory there, but it really is all going to come down to Waukesha - feels like we have said that way too many times in recent history.

11:44 PM
It is all down to the 8th - while I've revised my projection downward in the 18th (due to a little spreadsheet error), more results have come in that have ensured victory over there. All we can do now is wait for the spotlight hogs in Waukesha, and hope for the best

12:10 AM
A lot of Waukesha has come in now, and the result doesn't change the model for Democrats in the 8th. That news is good - the question now becomes whether or not Democrats can rack up a 14,000 margin in Milwaukee. That is doable, but as results have come in across the night, we are seeing Milwaukee county trending away from Democrats, rather than gaining in advantage.

12:29 AM
We're still taking a hard look at the data in the 8th Senate District, where Democrats are going to have a difficult time making a comeback. The numbers from Waukesha County were not terrible for Dems - the fear was that it was going to tilt the county even further in the Republican's favor, but the margin held consistent throughout. It will be extremely interesting to see the results that come out of Menomenee Falls, where they appear to be sitting on the results until tomorrow. There are still 12 outstanding counties in Milwaukee, but this isn't super liberal territory, so finding the votes to flip this race will be incredibly difficult. I'd say there's probably a greater chance at this point of Democrats picking up the seat after a long investigation into the Waukesha County clerk's office rather than winning the vote outright tonight - if the numbers we've been given are true, the votes just aren't out there to be picked up.

Approaching Decision Day - Breaking Down Wisconsin

2011-08-08T16:44:00.000-04:00

Well, it has been a while since I last updated - with school around the corner, I have been trying to get things in line on that end, and have also been reflecting on how this website will evolve as my summer research period comes to a halt.

Traffic has been growing on the LDI steadily since this project started, and I am incredibly proud of the product I have put out thus far, which is precisely why I find myself at a bit of an impasse. As of today, I have released indexes for virtually every state that releases easily accessible precinct-level election data, and has been doing so for the past decade.

Unfortunately, that is around 20% of the states, which is not nearly as much as I would like to have complete. But without financial support from anywhere, I struggle not only to afford the time investment it takes to compile this data, but in many cases, I cannot afford to purchase election results from a company like PoliData. With school soon occupying my full-time attention, the opportunity for me to continue to publish new states at the rate I have over the past few months is quickly drying up.

With all that said, this site is far from dead. The fact remains that there are few good places to find electoral analysis and insight for state legislatures. DailyKos Elections and Red Racing Horses both offer far much more in coverage than traditional media outlets have, but both sides are burdened with also covering Congressional and Presidential campaigns, and so one cannot expect to see state legislative elections getting the red carpet treatment.

At my core, I believe state legislatures are the most important battleground for progressive policy - they are the real opportunities for us to innovate, and just as importantly, they present easy opportunities for conservatives to derail this country's progress with regressive policies like the ones we have seen in Wisconsin. They deserve our full attention, and if I can be a place where they receive that kind of coverage, then I want to do everything to make sure I do it right.

So, here's an outline of what to expect from this website as we go forward:

1.) Increased coverage of state legislative elections - profiling legislators and candidates who deserve a platform, providing analysis of general and special elections, results liveblogs, and election wrap-ups.

2.) Continued updates for the states that have all ready been released - as more data comes out regarding redistricting, I'll compile indexes for the new legislative districts in the states we have covered, and update scores after each state goes to the polls.

3.) New states - there are still states (Michigan) that I am working on, as well as others where I have close to all the information I need to publish them. But by prioritizing the above two goals, I can ensure that I'm not releasing states where I am not 100% confident in the numbers I put out, which I think is better for me and better for my readers.

This all starts this week, as tomorrow presents us with one of the most-followed state legislative races I can recall.

Tomorrow night, Wisconsin voters will go the polls in a recall election for six Republican state senators - a week later, two Democratic state senators will face the same test. Democrats need a net gain of three seats in these races in order to flip control of the Senate, and significantly halt the damage Wisconsin Governor Scott Brown has done to the state. But as I have said in past Wisconsin updates, that road forward is not easy - four of the six Republicans on the block are in districts that Republicans are expected to safely win in generic elections.

But this election is anything but generic, and so tomorrow night I'll be updating everyone with data as it comes in. We'll be comparing Democratic performance to the Wisconsin LDI's expectations in every district, trying to measure the size of the anti-Walker wave and what it means for each election so that we can predict the results a little sooner than some of the traditional media outlets.

Sanders Leads All Challengers in Vermont

2011-08-02T11:31:00.001-04:00

Occasionally I'll step out of the sphere of state legislative politics to comment on what is going on in Vermont - partially because there aren't that many places in Vermont where that type of commentary is occurring. So when I heard last week that Public Policy Polling was going to be heading into the field in Vermont, I was incredibly excited.

Their first batch of results is out today, and it is all about Senator Bernie Sanders. The results are fairly unsurprising - Senator Sanders is safely over 50% against all challengers, despite the fact that Vermonters have positive views of all of his possible opponents.

What I was more interested in seeing was the favorability ratings among Vermont republicans, compared to the advantage for Democrats in state. In the following chart, I have the favorability data from the PPP poll, and then I took their net favorability and added it to the Democratic margin of victory in the state. My rationale for doing so is that the most votes a Republican can expect to receive are all of those of their own party, and all the votes of Democrats who have a positive opinion of them.

I think that's a pretty accurate representation of the respective candidate's current ceilings - had Anthony Pollina not been in the 2008 race, I wouldn't have been surprised for Douglas to rack up something near that total (though never all the way - there are plenty of people who like Douglas but would never vote for him - there are also just a LOT of people who like him and WILL vote for him.

I'm surprised to see Brian Dubie's numbers so high given how damaging the last campaign was to his reputation. I think this really leads credence to the idea that Dubie could get in the race again, and be competitive, by running a Vermont-centric campaign, as opposed to outsourcing everything to national consulting groups that were totally tone deaf.

Phil Scott remains is good position, but not an unbeatable one - it would be really great to see a strong Democrat come in and put him up against the ropes - Steve Howard could have done it last cycle, but nobody seemed to provide his campaign with the support he needed when he needed it most.

Finally, it is nice to see Lauzon underwater, even at really low recognition levels. The idea of a Lauzon candidacy as anything more than a sideshow has always been funny to me - he really lacks the appeal to expand to a broader audience, and if Republicans are serious about him, then they are wildly overrating the Barre Mayor's office as a stepping stone for statewide politics.

As PPP releases more data throughout the week, we will be sure to follow up - keep your fingers crossed that we'll get some great numbers on the Governor's race, and maybe the Treasurer contest.

Finally, today I'm helping out a friend who is exactly the kind of legislator that gives me hope - the kind of person you want to discover when doing projects like this one. Vermont Rep. Kesha Ram is turning 25 today, and I wrote a diary over at Daily Kos about the incredible work she is doing. As a birthday gift, I'm encouraging people to donate $10 today - please read the diary or click the flyer below, and consider helping out one of the progressive leader's of the future.

Michigan is Coming - I Promise!

2011-08-01T12:14:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone! Just wanted to put a little quick update out there - between some other projects with deadlines coming up, and problems we have had with the Michigan results file, our Michigan launch has taken a little longer than I would have desired. However, we've added an intern to the staff here, and so we are racing to finish this up as soon as possible - should be out by tomorrow!

Trouble Out in Nevada

2011-07-27T14:43:00.000-04:00

Today's update is on a different note than some of the ones that have come before it. As this project has been progressed, I've been incredibly fortunate to have wonderful data made available by state's elections divisions - data down to every individual precinct, so I can truly plot out every district individually.

Unfortunately, I'm running out of state where that kind of data is readily available. Today's post will serve as an example of that problem - the state of Nevada only releases election results down to county level. In some states, you can get away with that, but not in Nevada, where nearly 75% of the state population is split between two counties.

So, before I get to the districts themselves, I want to put out a few instructions on how to read this data. The statewide average is accurate, and wouldn't change with more detailed information - at 51-49, Nevada is the closest state we have looked at thus far. At the presidential level, the state has been trending Democratic, but Democrats have struggled in state, losing the past two gubernatorial contests by significant margins. The one bright spot has been the legislature, where a Democratic majority is preventing Republican governor Brian Sandoval from implementing the same sort of destructive policies that have been emblematic of east-coast Republican governors.

So, the baseline data about the state as a whole is strong. The Democratic end of the spectrum has been compressed however, as the county level data keeps me from extracting out the districts that are significantly more or less democratic than the county as a whole. The Republican end is less distorted, as the rural districts have been kept largely in tact.

This data is precisely why this project relies on your help. Without more detailed data, we can't do the kind of analysis we love to provide, and the whole community suffers. If you have good data for how these districts overlap with the senate seats OR precinct by precinct data for ANY statewide race in the state, please e-mail me at mbreuer.vt@gmail.com. Furthemore, if you have that kind of data for ANY state, please feel free to reach out to me as well - while there are a few states remaining that I am set with, plenty more need an awful lot of help. And finally, as the 2011 year winds down, I would love any detailed redistricting data that is available, so I can start prepping these indexes for the upcoming elections.

Why the Tea Party Capsized in Delaware

2011-07-22T08:39:00.001-04:00

Delaware doesn't get talked about all that often for being a blue state - before the arrival of Christine O'Donnell in 2010, most Democrats had written off the Senate seat to longtime representative Mike Castle. But Castle's popularity in the nation's first state doesn't warrant lopsided ideas about political preferences in Delaware - in fact, of all the states surveyed thus far, Delaware is the most Democratic state yet, giving generic Democrats a 60-40 advantage out of the gate.

The state's long tradition of re-electing incumbents has somewhat masked the fact that currently Democrats enjoy enormous advantages on the ground. With an all blue congressional delegation, and a Democratic trifecta at the state house, there are few states where Democrats have such a wide open path for implementing substantial change. And none of this even mentions the fact that the Vice President calls the state home.

So what kind of results can you get from the kind of legislature we see above? Governor Jack Markell managed to wind up with a $320 million surplus, allowing the state to pay down some of their debt while increasing funding for important programs, enacting civil unions, and legalizing the medicinal use of marijuana. Other than token Republican complaints, this style of smart governing does not seem to be creating enemies for Markell, who will face re-election next fall.

On the Senate side of things, Republicans appear to hold a wider variety of districts, rather than being as marginalized as they are in the house. Keep in mind for those who are not up on the Delaware maps, but the two chamber's districts don't follow each other's boundaries in any meaningful way. I'm not quite sure why a Republican is in such a Democratic district, unless I've either unintentionally ballooned Democratic strength there, or if there's something I simply don't know about. Keep in mind that while House Democrats picked up two seats in Delaware last fall, Democrats lost two from their ranks on the Senate side. Either way, the perspective of a native would be welcome, and I"ll be happy to dive in and try to find the error if that is indeed the case.

All these results ought to make clear the tactical immaturity of the Tea Party Express and their supporters. There was one Republican who could win this Senate seat for them - that's one Republican whose party registration might be the deciding factor in flipping control of the chamber. They managed to take that one politician, beat him mercilessly, and replace him with a woman who couldn't move a single percent past that generic gap during the best election year for Republicans in a long time. That money could have been spent in plenty more useful places: trying to finish off Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, who only squeezed by District Attorney Ken Buck by a few votes; Senator Harry Reid, who while also facing an incompetent candidate, was in a far more electorally precarious position, or propping up Joe Miller in Alaska, who by all accounts would have been a real bomb-thrower in the Senate. Instead, they attached their carts to the little engine that could not, and find themselves spending to try and take back the Senate again this time around.

The politics of the Tea Party Express, and their various affiliates, ignore reality at the expense of ideology. So long as they never question what kind of candidate a district needs in order to win, they can keep shoving very conservative Republicans down the throats of voters, with the knowledge that their donors will remain happy with the promotion of a single ideology. And if voters adjust their preferences over time to expect the Tea Party platform as that of the Republican party, than they have managed to win the war without winning the battle. It is precisely this reason that when Democrats face of against Tea Party candidates, painting them as extreme should be priority number one. If Democrats win the fights while letting them move the goalposts, we'll allow a highly flawed political strategy to undo our own electoral successes.

In closing, I would also note that thus far, I have not been able to get my hands on clear data about how the new district plans correspond to old voting districts - I'll be happy to provide ranking scores for the new-look legislature as soon as someone can find that data, just let me know at matthew.breuer@yale.edu

Windsor 6-1 (VT) Should Not Be Cause for Concern

2011-07-21T08:55:00.000-04:00

For all the horrible choices governors tend to make when it comes to filling vacant Senate seats, they appear to fare much better when it comes to replacing state legislators. Today, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin named special educator/filmmaker Teo Zagar to finish the term of former Representative Mark Mitchell, who had resigned for health reasons. Zagar is relatively young, and his knowledge of special education issues could be useful when the legislature takes up some systemic education issues in the not-so-distant future.

Any time an established incumbent is replaced with new blood, the other side is bound to be licking their lips, but in this case, Republicans are likely to come up empty. Below are the Vermont District Index scores for the past three cycles - not only does Windsor 6-1 sit at a healthy 57-43 Democratic edge, but it has also been trending away from Republicans by roughly 3% a cycle.

Representative Mark Larson also stepped down from his seat in the legislature to accept an appointment in the administration. Rep. Larson's seat gives Democrats even less to worry about, as you can see below. However, it isn't every day that an open seat shows up in Burlington, and you would have to imagine that a handful of people are going to want to be involved. It also happens to be the only single members district in the city of Burlington, which might avoid some of the ugly complications that have plagued races in that area. Hope for the appointment to be a good one, as this seat is blue enough that the person selected should be safe for a long while.

From the Front Page to the Front Lines: Taking Back New Hampshire

2011-07-20T10:11:00.001-04:00

It has been a wild weekend for the Legislative District Index. On Saturday, I wound up on the front page of the Burlington Free Press for my work on this project and the work done so far, with a focus on my Vermont analysis. It was wonderful for the project to get that kind of exposure, and I am incredibly thankful for their coverage. The Hawaii Free Press also ran a small piece looking for hope in my Hawaiian data. This project would not be getting any kind of coverage however if there was not a constant stream of new state, so with that being said, today I am releasing the largest legislature we will cover here: New Hampshire.

For all the attention that midwestern states have received the past few months by the online progressive community, Republicans in New Hampshire have been doing everything possible to regress the state's laws. Led by their tea-flavored house leadership, Republicans have worked on "right to work", voter ID, deadly force, parental notification for abortions, and the New Hampshire Executive Committee recent voted to defund Planned Parenthood. Without Governor John Lynch's veto power, my neighbors would be looking a lot more comfortable below the Mason-Dixon Line rather than sharing the Connecticut River - but that hasn't stopped everything.

First, a note about the data above - because of the size of New Hampshire's house districts (they range from 1 to 13 members), I had to change up the way I present data. Each district is shaded with the color of the party who holds a majority of the seats in that district - in the few instances that the district is split, the district has been colored purple. If this is your first time looking at LDI data, you need to know that the "NH-DI" column is a measurement of how much greater the margin of victory for a Republican or Democrat is expected to be compared to the state on average. The 50-50 data, to the right, is simply the raw unadjusted score. The Senate, ringing in at 24 members, is much more simple to present, I have presented that data in the same manner that I always do.

Despite the small advantage the index finds in favor of Democrats, in many ways the results I've found in New Hampshire are worse for Democrats than they were in states like Wisconsin and Ohio, where Democrats had less of a generic edge. Of the 57 districts that the index indicates Democrats have an advantage, Republicans manage to hold most of the seats in a majority of those districts. While that is a huge advantage, the institutional factors somewhat distort their advantage. When districts are so small, slight changes in preferences can wind up flipping a massive number of seats. This makes the Republican majority look much stronger than it truly is - a rejection of the Republican legislative agenda (of which there is plenty to find objectionable could easily swing the pendulum back the other way, and give Democrats a governing majority.

Consider House Speaker Bill O'Brien (Hillsborough 4) as a case study. Under his guidance, the legislature has been focused on passing as much red meat to satisfy conservatives as possible. While this strategy has rendered him with little ability to effectively govern, he and the rest of the members of his new majority depend on big conservative turnout if they are to have any chance at maintaining their majorities. In his case, he is governing from a district where generic results point to a 50-50 tie, and doing so as if he came from a place far more conservative than any district in New Hampshire. While it is never easy to unseat a legislative leader, O'Brien represents a unique chance to dismantle the Republican caucus from the top.

I noted above that Republicans have been governing as though they represented a different state than their current home. That is not to say, however, that Democratic control should be thought of as a guarantee like in much of New England. Despite my girlfriend's protestations that New Hampshire is nothing more than an upside-down Vermont, Maine is where the real similarities lie. Consider the generic scores for both states - Vermont's Democratic edge is almost twice that of New Hampshire's - instead, New Hampshire Democrats have edged out just ahead of their underperforming eastern neighbors. However, comparing the scores from the three New England states surveyed presents a pretty remarkable similarity. All three are anchored by a Democratic stronghold - Burlington, Portland, and Hanover, nearly 50% of their seats are within 10% of the state average, and then each trails off into some rural territory that is slightly more Republican at the end. The graph below overlays the three scores, and yields what I think is a pretty remarkable result.

Lastly, just a little housekeeping. If you are the RSS feed type, it is easier than ever to subscribe to our feed - just click the RSS logo on the homepage. Also, I'm working on rehauling the website a little bit - please feel free to offer suggestions on things you would like to see, or that you believe need changing. Finally, the LDI is on the road this week - I'm working with the team at Begin Blue, a Democratic startup focused on providing training so that young people can be ready to make a meaningful difference in 2012 campaigns from the moment they are hired - check them out if you get the chance.

We Were Featured in the Burlington Free Press!

2011-07-16T07:07:00.001-04:00

I have some really exciting news for all of our readers - in today's Burlington Free Press, there is a front-page feature on the LDI, and my work in getting the project started.

He applied for a research grant from Yale, but said that when he didn’t get it, he faced a choice: “Abandon it or just do it anyway. If I don’t do it now, when in my life would I have the time? I just decided to do it. If I make nothing out of it, at least I completed the project, which to me has value in itself.”

He has completed 15 states.

“It isn’t easy,” he conceded. The biggest challenge hasn’t been the six hours it takes on average to organize a state’s data from six elections to produce his index. Rather, he said, it has been the variable accuracy, detail and availability of state election data.

Breuer identifies himself as a Democratic activist but said he is sharing his index with anyone who is interested. “Everyone, whether a tea party activist or a progressive activist, should have information,” he said.

The article is a great look at what goes in on the backend of the project, and the effort it takes to release new states every week. I'm incredibly excited to share this work with a broader audience, and welcome all of our new readers. Below, I've provided quick links to all of my work on Vermont, but I hope you'll expand out and check some of the other states we have released as well - the data tells such interesting stories in every state we come across. Lastly, I just want to thank all of the people who have been reading from the start - your support means a lot to me.

Bipartisanship in Palin's Backyard and the Politics of Winning Presidential Candidates

2011-07-14T10:08:00.000-04:00

On Monday, I released a state that a future presidential contender has been working his way through - the state I'm dropping today was once home to the most infamous vice presidential candidate in US history - Sarah Palin. It should come as no surprise that the state with the smallest legislature in the country - 40 house members, 20 senators - produces some of the most interesting outcomes, including the only chamber governed by a bi-partisan coalition.

One of the things that catches my eyes immediately with Alaska is the relative success of Democrats given the the territory. Despite only nine seats having positive 50/50 numbers for Democrats, they hold sixteen seats. Those sixteen are not spread out everywhere either - they are anchored in the seats they need to win in order to take the chamber.

The Senate side is where things get real interesting. Back in 2006, Democrats and a select few Republicans chose together into what they call the Alaska Senate Majority Bipartisan Working Group. The arrangement splits leadership positions between members of both parties that are part of the group, leaving a small Republican minority that has been aligned with recent governors.

Some parts of the coalition make easy sense - who would control the chamber was highly contested, and so it likely made sense for Republicans in more liberal districts to join forces and end the confusion. But that solution offer no explanation as to why the Senators representing the two most Republican districts - places where a 74 - 26 victory is to be expected - would also jump ship. The source of the division appears to instead result from the serious personal differences that permeate Alaskan Republican politics - the kind of divisions that allowed Sarah Palin to primary an incumbent governor, and find Republicans in her state complaining about her once she was elevated to the national stage.

Alaskan Democrats deserve attention - this isn't fertile ground, yet they hold an effective majority in one chamber, and are barely in the minority in the other. While it would be interesting to hear what they believe they've done well to get them to this point, I think the greatest success the party has had is a strategy that seeks to exploit every Republican misstep. As Sen. Ted Stevens slid deeper and deeper into scandal mode, they had a strong Democrat in Mark Begich waiting in the wings, who has quietly amassed a strong voting record despite his conservative constituency. While Scott McAdams came up shy, they were right in the thick of the campaign once Joe Miller one the primary, and had Sen. Lisa Murkowski not won the anti-Miller vote, I'd be willing to bet that we would have another Democrat in the Senate. If Democrats can continue to hold their own in the legislature, they'll always have the candidates that can pop up the next time Alaska Republicans name someone who is halfway from crazy.

While we are on the topic of crazy, it should be noted that Sarah Palin's election as governor doesn't get nearly as much attention as it should have during the campaign. While everyone bags on Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty's highly unimpressive election margins, at least he can point to Democrats generic average in the state. Sarah only picked up 48% of the vote, edging her opponent by 7 points, in a state where a Republican should be expected to double that. Anyone who had looked at her election for more than a second would know that her charisma had done nothing to win over independents - it exclusively excited conservatives. While conservatives might not have been in love with John McCain, the notion that they were not going to vote for him against the man they depicted as the anti-Christ was absolutely ludicrous - they forfeited electability for a candidate who could not fulfill the office's one real constitutional duty - ability to assume the presidency.

Politics is not as simple as winners and losers - plenty of successful politicians lose races at some point in their career, but their upward trajectory is clear. Obama or Clinton losing their campaigns for the House weren't daggers because they seemed capable of even greater things. That is the real failure of this current Republican field, and its leader, Mitt Romney. Romney has won a single campaign in his life, it was close, and he knew he didn't have a shot at re-election. He's not the kind of candidate whose lost on the way up - he's been running for significant office since 1994. Santorum has the same mark of a loser, as does Gingrich. The one person in the campaign who really has an ascendent political history is Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann - someone who has never lost a campaign, taken on incumbents, and been faced with heavily funded challengers. I think this accounts for her ability to stand behind everything she says, no matter how wrong it is. Politicians like Bachmann never have to second guess themselves, where as an old hand like Romney is constantly thinking of all the ways he has been burned in the past, and adjusting his statements and positions to get himself out of trouble. Her strength may not be a recipe for success at the national level, but in Republican primaries? It is as good as they get.

Fake Dems Fall in Wisconsin

2011-07-13T11:30:00.000-04:00

Last night, the six Democrats attempting to win recall elections for the Wisconsin State Senate faced their first electoral challenge, albeit an unusual one. In a classic Walker-inspired maneuver, the Wisconsin GOP (recently headed up by national GOP Chairman Reince Priebus) entered six anti-recall "Democrats" into the races, forcing each challenger to burn money and energy to win a primary. While they certainly would have loved to win, the good luck wasn't with them last night, as the real Democratic candidates won every primary, with all but one race decided by a solid 20% margin.

The only question mark last night was District 10, where Shelley Moore maintained a narrow lead throughout the count, and finished with only 55% of the vote. Moore, a teacher who was laid off as a result of Walker cuts in January, differs from the other Democratic candidates with experience in public office. The choice of Moore as a candidate seemed an inspired one, so long as she could get her name out there. But after last night's performance, I think it is clear that of the six Senate seats, this is one where we might be in a bit of trouble. Moore has to better define herself to the public - she is a perfect symbol of what this entire debate has been about, but if people don't know that, her name recognition is going to sink her on election day.

For reference, above is the district index for the Wisconsin State Senate - recalled Senators are highlighted in Gray. As I said back when this website was first launching, despite the huge populist support in Wisconsin, this was going to be an incredibly tough recall election. Unlike Ohio, Florida, New Jersey, and Michigan - where new Republican governors are watching their popularity tank - Scott Walker still has fervent support, and Republicans are energized to validate his agenda through holding these seats. With the exception of Kapanke's seat, which is a must-win for Democrats, the other five races are an uphill battle - all would be expected to fall Republican if I was just writing a generic election preview. The engagement of the union community since last fall however may understand potential Democratic support in some of these districts, but either way, it is Democrats who have the hill to climb if they are going to win. For Shelley Moore, she is going to need as many people pushing her up that hill as possible.

O'Malley in 2016: Rising From the Sea of Blue

2011-07-11T11:02:00.002-04:00

As ridiculous as all of the "Cuomo 2016" buzz I have been reading online appears, one person whose electoral fortunes are far more interesting to me is Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley. He is well networked, good-looking, the current Democratic Governors Association chair, but above all, he has an electoral record that inspires envy.

While his victory over incumbent governor Bob Ehrlich in 2006 was impressive, equally so was his defense of that office in 2010, where he doubled his margin in a re-match - a stark contrast against all the other blue governors who found themselves looking for work in the private sector after last fall.

Part of what enabled O'Malley to stay around is the state that he resides in. Maryland has now leap-frogged into first place on our "most Democratic list", topping Vermont and edging out Hawaii. Not only has Maryland voted strongly Democratic at the presidential level, but O'Malley's victory margins have proved an even stronger indicator of Democratic strength in the state. And with control of legislative seats the span an incredibly diverse range of ideologies within the state, culminating in control of both chambers, it is hard to argue with that kind of success.

The Democratic base in Maryland is anchored by performance in Washington D.C. suburbs and Baltimore, where black voters put up 95-5 margins for Obama in some districts. That huge base of votes has led to a legislature distribution that is bears little resemblance to anything we have seen so far. This is one of the cases where I think a graphic is incredibly helpful in understanding just how different Maryland is.

The graphic above plots out the partisan distribution of seats in every legislature we've tackled thus far. The y-axis uses the LDI numbers, while the x-axis measures from most Democratic to least. Starting at the left, Maryland winds up third highest on the list, but the difference is that they're the only one in that grouping from a very blue state, where the generic advantage has all ready been subtracted. In the case of Nebraska (1st) and Wisconsin (2nd), these were strong Democratic areas made even more so by their existance within a conservative to moderate state. But not Maryland - instead, these seats are just the beginning of a long string of incredible strong territory for the party. In almost every state we have worked on, after the first tenth of the seats, the LDI scores start approaching that middle-mark, where the only advantage in the district is the one that the party enjoys throughout the entire state. But not Maryland - there are districts near the D+40 mark through the first 20% of the state. When things do drop to the state average, they do it fast - there is an incredibly sharp decline within that middle 20% of seats, and then suddenly, the seats become more Republican than we've seen thus far - though that is also a function of the unprecedented advantage the Democratic party enjoys in the state.

I use the normalized LDI data as opposed to the 50/50 numbers because I believe it effectively illustrates one thing - Maryland is by far the most polarized state we have come across. Sure, there are other states with districts far more Democratic than the rest, but that is a natural feature - metro areas are going to produce these sort of bumps. But generically, the middle 50% of districts are within a fairly narrow electoral ban +/- 10% or so. Now, those districts might favor one party of the other, but the central point is that there is a large swath of the electorate that is of a relatively similar composition - the ability to win them over to your side probably translates into electoral success for your party.

In Maryland however, that middle section is totally absent. I believe the kind of data we're seeing here makes a strong case for campaigning to your base rather than the middle in Maryland, as there isn't a homogenous middle-group to court. It immediately brings to mind some of the ridiculous cynical campaign tactics employed by the Ehrlich and Steele campaigns - fake brochures advertising Republicans as Democrats, ground campaigns to designed to cause confusion and uncertainty within the Democratic base, rather than winning over those middle, "independent", Maryland voters. While their tactics were absolutely indefensible, they were operating them along the only path to victory they saw - bolstering turnout among their supporters, and counting on that huge Democratic base to miss out on election day.

Governor O'Malley strikes an impressive figure, and I really look forward to seeing what he brings to the table over the next few years - he could be a real exciting prospect for the party. But people on the sidelines need to be aware of the political realities all of our figures live with - in O'Malley's case, he's managed a consistent, effective, and diverse party within a state that starts out incredibly blue to begin with. He is doing it governing as a Democrat on most issues, unlike Cuomo, and if he keeps it up he could find himself challenging for a bigger stage. But after getting rolled on same-sex marriage this year, and allowing Cuomo to steal the spotlight and adulation of the progressive community, O'Malley is going to have to up his game if he thinks he is ready for primetime.

A Long Way from Home: Ending Republican Radicalization in Minnesota

2011-07-06T11:15:00.004-04:00

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July weekend - I know the holiday certainly got me thinking about what has been going on across the country. For all the nonsense Republicans spout off about "following the founders", it seems that a key part of the founding wisdom has been thrown out the door by the GOP across the country. The founders sought legislators who would be a class above the rest - the responsibility they were entrusting them with demanded intelligent minds who could effectively govern. Yet from Washington D.C. to St. Paul, Minnesota, Republicans are completely abdicating that responsibility. Today I'm turning my lens on Minnesota, where Republican-controlled legislature has prioritized banning same-sex marriage and decreasing taxes for millionaires over keeping the state government running.

The Minnesota legislature was victim of the same Republican wave that took chambers in Wisconsin & Ohio, but Governor Mark Dayton provided one of the few bright spots for Democrats last fall, edging out a narrow victory. While the consensus is that Dayton wasn't the most inspiring candidate, the 9% advantage the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party possesses in the state was enough of an edge to take the governor's race, and since taking office, Dayton has shown himself more than capable of performing the job.

Unsurprisingly, it has been the Republican legislature that has provided the headache thus far. Early in the session, Republicans decided that amidst a struggling economy and severe budgetary problems, making a resilient stand against same-sex marriage was the best way the legislature could pass their time. Now, we all could be wrong here - maybe Minnesota Republicans are just hoping the National Organization for Marriage will inject a few million dollars into advertising revenues, but I've got a gut feeling that on this one, they are just wasting everyone's time with a hurtful, useless fight, trying to erect a hurdle that even if created, will only live to be knocked over in a few more years. While the issue hasn't been polled too much, in early June PPP found voters split at 46-47 on the amendment, which is right in line with Nate Silver's projections on the vote

*District 56 is actually represented by a Republican following the 2010 election

But the real issue commanding attention now is the government shutdown. Faced with a budgetary hole, Governor Dayton has been willing to do something that other blue state governors have cowered away from - taxing millionaires. In addition to significant cuts to state spending, Dayton sought to increase taxes on Minnesotans making over a million dollars a year. Naturally, Republicans found this appalling, and rather than tax their rich friends, they would rather delay $700 million in funding to schools, which would put the state more than $1 billion behind their educational funding promises.

So why have Republicans painted themselves into this ridiculous corner? Anytime a longterm minority party sweeps into power, they're going to be a little hungry for red meat, and I think that is the real motive on the same-sex marriage vote. Even if the issue is a losing one, it asserts that so long as Republicans are in control, they will determine what the state is talking about. The budgetary lockup, however, is a bit more complex. On the path to their new majority, the MNGOP made a Norquist-flavored promise to voters about not raising their taxes.

Another compounding factor is the size of the legislature. At 134 seats, the Minnesota House is one of the largest chambers we've looked at so far. It seems on a very basic level, the larger a chamber is, the stronger chance that ideological factions can control the chambers debate. In a smaller legislature, deep red legislators would still exist by the same proportions, but in this configuration there are many more voices in the cloak room to pressure moderates into holding tough. Twenty Republicans sit in House seats where a generic Democrat has an advantage (and roughly the same proportion in the Senate), yet instead of governing like the moderate their district suggests, they're throwing away their political career voting as an ideologue.

If progressives are serious about changing this country's political agenda, this is a key place where we need to start. Republicans built their to power through small, local elections, and eventually those people carried over into higher office. I know there are plenty of groups spending money to try to take over legislative chambers, but a situation like this begs for a group to exclusively target legislators representing moderate districts who vote like hardliners. It feels like since the advent of the Tea Party, progressives have been content to snicker about how unelectable tea party nominees are, but for every Christine O'Donnell, there are countless small-time legislators waiting in the wings. We can't keep their ridiculous politics out of legislatures all together, because there is an ideological support base for them - but we can make sure that if they try to share those views in moderate territory, they run out of oxygen fast, and are forced to choose between ideology and political livelihood.

As always, downloadable data can be found on the mainpage of the site. With midsummer upon us, I'm making my best efforts to gather all the data needed for the remaining states, but that isn't always easy. If anyone has comprehensive data from their state's elections at the precinct level, sending it to matthew.breuer@yale.edu is a huge help, and would be greatly appreciated.

Starting the Decade Right: New Jersey, Round 2

2011-06-27T21:00:00.002-04:00

After some work over the weekend, I've put together the preliminary data for the 2011-2020 New Jersey legislature. While this is a good start, it will be much more valuable to look at after fall elections, when there is some real data to kick around, but I wanted to present this with a few notes:

- Some readers had suggested that the 40th district appears too Democratic by my measurements, and I'm inclined to believe that - however, updating the districts moves it closer to where it should be. It was originally the 13th most Democratic district, now it is the 19th, but the real change is in LDI score, moving from D+10 to D+4. The 50/50 numbers indicate that a generic Dem would have a 56-44 advantage, but I'm hoping that the static goes away after 2011.

- Because the previous map was so solid for Democrats, they haven't really be able to do much to shore up their more vulnerable members. The real legislators at risk are those who broke with their party and voted with Christie recently - as there is virtually no justification for voting like a Republican if you're a Democrat when no one is representing strongly conservative territory.

- The big mover? District 4, which shot up from the 18th to 13th most Democratic, making it the most blue territory where a Republican still holds office. With an expected generic result in the neighborhood of 58-42, that should be an easy pick-up that would quickly counter Republicans winning any of their friendlier targets.

New Jersey: Before or After the Storm?

2011-06-23T16:24:00.000-04:00

Today begins the first of a two part series looking at New Jersey - first as how the districts have existed for the past decade, and then as the districts will exist following this fall's election. This is the first chance I've had to look at a state before and after redistricting, which offers a lot of exciting opportunities.

Like several states before it, New Jersey's legislature is configured in 40 districts that elect one senator and two representatives. What stands out immediately as unique about Jersey is the fact that only one two-member district split their vote between the two parties, unprecedented compared to the other multi-member states we have looked at so far.

In fact, in terms of competitiveness, the map New Jersey has been using for the past year is certainly unique, in that it is hardly competitive. In fact, when you graph out the distribution of scores compared to the other states we've surveyed, New Jersey is entirely different - with large numbers of safe seats, a sharp drop into the handful of competitive areas, and then another drop into safe Republican territory. But it isn't just the data that tells the story, as Rutgers professor Ingrid Reed has remarked that in any given year, only three to five legislative races are truly up for grabs.

This is the very reason why the 2011 election is shaping up to be so challenging for New Jersey Democrats. The election of Chris Christie wasn't all that unique given the abysmal reception Democrats were receiving back in the fall of 2009 - what was different, however, was that Democrats maintained control of the legislature, thanks to an incredibly friendly map. Even though the New Jersey redistricting commission ultimately approved the Democratic drawn map for the next decade, what is revealing is that while not happy by any stretch, Republicans recognize that this map is a significant improvement for them over the status quo.

2011 isn't 2009 - there are plenty of things that have changed, and the environment isn't nearly as Republican as it was back then. That being said, Democrats aren't out of the water. Chris Christie's popularity may have fallen, but it's not clear that it has come to the benefit of New Jersey Democrats, and this time, they'll be waging that defense on a less friendly map. How less friendly will be the subject of our next update, which I hope you all check out.

Vermont, Part 2: Scoring the State Senate

2011-06-20T16:44:00.000-04:00

For the second installment of my Vermont series, I want to illustrate one of the ways that LDI scores can be useful in non-electoral analysis. One of the the biggest issues citizens face when it comes to state government is that they often know very little about what the people they are voting for support - especially in a state with districts as small as Vermont, where campaigns for state legislature aren't high-spending ultra-partisan affairs. While the recall will be the true barometer, if Wisconsin residents knew what the legislators they were electing really wanted to do with state government, would they have ever had the numbers to take such destructive acts?

In order to combat this lack of information, third party groups often try to inform voters about candidate positions on their individual issues, and this is helpful, to a point. Scorecard scores tend to be intentionally divisive, looking to paint one party as against their issues, and another for it - furthermore, on something like environmental issues, a Democrat with a far from perfect record on the environment might be a considerable improvement over someone who will vote against environmental interests 100% of the time.

By using these third-party scorecards, and plotting them against the District Index scores for the districts these legislators represent, we have better context to evaluate which legislators are pulling their weight on which issues, and to what degree a legislator might be deviating from the rest of his party.

Below I have taken four scorecards that cover the 2009-2010 members of the Vermont Senate, and plotted them against the index score for the Senate district they represent.

Chamber of Commerce scores tend to be balanced in favor of Republicans, with Democrats much more likely to receive lower scores. Unlike some below, these scores are just based on the 09/10 session, and the full list of bills included can be found on the Vermont Chamber of Commerce website. The black line is a simple linear regression of the data. The results speak to the amount of ideological diversity within the Democratic party. Take the Chittenden Senate district (D+10) for example: Sen. Diane Snelling (50%) only receives the third highest score in the district, behind Doug Racine (56%), and Sen. Hinda Miller, whose 79% score is tied among Democrats only by Bob Starr, whose Essex-Orleans seat (R+16) is one of the most Republican districts in the entire state.

The VPIRG scores also only cover the last session, and are significantly less partisan, with all but five senators scoring 80% or higher. The underachieving six? Democratic Senators Dick Sears and Dick Mazza, both just hovering above 50%, and then Republicans Randy Brock, Kevin Mullin, and then-Sen. Phil Scott, whose 44% is only higher than Peg Flory. Sen. Flory's score is artificially deflated however, as she did not have a full session's worth of votes to be recorded on.

The League of Conservation Voters release lifetime scores, which are even better indicators to really get a grip on where legislators stand. Again, Sen. Flory brings up the rear at 13%, but just as significant is the fact that the second lowest score again belong to Sen. Starr. Also worth a mention is Sen. Alice Nitka's score of 67%. While it's not as low as some other members of the Democratic caucus, it is notable for the fact that among the cluster of Democrats in districts comparable to her own, it is significantly lower than her colleagues.

Finally, the AFL-CIO also releases a lifetime scorecard. The only word of caution I would give is that they are incredibly selective about what votes are counted, and as a result, for first-term senators, the only scored vote was their decision to close Vermont Yankee as planned, which they scored as a "bad" vote. That is why someone like Progressive Senator Tim Ashe, who you would expect to see near the top of this graph, is instead on the bottom line. It's also worth noting the Republican scores on this one: Sen. Snelling's score is 2nd in her Caucus to Sen. Vince Illuzzi. Effectively, the two most pro-labor Republicans come from the two Republican Senators whose districts are farthest apart.

If this data is interesting to you, it is worth checking out a post I made on Green Mountain Daily a while back, looking at these same scores for members of the Vermont House. With Vermont behind us, I'll have more states on the way shortly.

Alcohol, Grand Theft Auto, and Idaho Politics

2011-06-19T20:15:00.001-04:00

Out in Idaho, State Senator John McGee has found him in a little bit of trouble with the law after a late night excursion went awry. Talking Points Memo has the full story, but a fair summary would be to say that Mr. McGee had a bit too much to drink, decided stealing a Ford Excursion was a good idea, and wound up being found by the police asleep in the back of that car at 3:00 AM.

TPM also made mention to the fact that Sen. McGee is seen as a potential candidate for higher office. He currently serves as the Majority Leader in the Idaho State Senate, and prior to entering the Senate, he had worked closely alongside former Idaho Governor and Senator Dick Kempthorne.

That being said, for a relatively entrenched incumbent, his numbers weren't anything magical. Looking back at our Idaho numbers, Mr. McGee's 10th District is R+7, where you would expect a generic result to be 69 - 33 for the Republican. In the past two elections, McGee has averaged a 72-27 victory. He's outperforming his district slightly, but comparatively, Sen. Russel Fulcher in the 21st District (R+7) brought home nearly 75% of the vote last time out. He may have been an insider, but when you are not some otherworldly popular figure, and you find yourself in the position Mr. McGee is in (namely, in jail), then you can probably kiss the rest of your political career goodbye, no matter how strongly your territory leans in your favor.

Diving Into Vermont: Part 1

2011-06-18T12:34:00.002-04:00

Back in the fall of 2009, I was looking for some metric to evaluate the risk posed to legislators by their vote on marriage equality the previous session. The result was the Vermont District Index, my first attempt at making any sort of metric for measuring partisanship in state legislatures. Two years later, that project has turned into the Legislative District Index.

Because of the time I have had to work with Vermont's data, today's post is going to be a little different than the states that have come before - I want to illustrate the real potential of this data over a longer period of time. For Vermont, I not only have 2010 data, but I also have data from 2008 and 2006, which I've made available for download here. For now though, we will just stick with the 2010 data - and I've included which party has held each seat for the past three sessions.

For those not familiar with the state, Vermont's legislature has some interesting quirks. The Vermont Constitution allows for house districts to be drawn for either one or two members, and makes no limit on how large a Senate district may be. The result is a six-seat Senate district covering most of Chittenden County - which is quite frankly deserving of a post dedicated to itself. Since I haven't had to publish a state with different sized districts yet, I couldn't figure out how I wanted to publish the Senate list, but the way I've done it below I think is the clearest to understand. Just understand that senators are elected at-large from county-sized districts.

Ed. note: Wash-Chit 1 should be listed as D/D for the 11/12 session

The other thing that stands out immediately is that the generic margin isn't nearly as Democratic as some might expect. On the national level, there is no question that Vermont is the safest of territory. But when it comes to state politics, a relatively weak Republican party has managed to perform well on the back of a few public figures. Consider this - a Democrat has not received over 50% of the gubernatorial vote since Howard Dean in 2000, when he captured 50.5% of the vote. Republicans have held around 1/3 of the seats in the state house for most of the decade, nothing like the absolute shutouts we've seen in some of the more Republican chambers in the country. That said, Vermont still comes in as the 2nd most Democratic state we've looked at so far, just behind Hawaii. The graph below shows the raw 50/50 scores of all the states surveyed thus far, with the line stretching from both extremes, and the bar covering the middle 50% of districts.

If you read our Maine article, we talked about the importance of a relatively stable ideological continuum within a party. If there are large ideological gaps, it becomes easy for the party to be either anchored to the safest of areas (Nebraska) or wind up promoting the growth of a third party (Maine). With strongholds in Burlington and Brattleboro, the Vermont Progressive Party seems to fit very well into this framework. Similar to the steep slopes we saw in the above states, there is a rather sharp drop off from the 8-10 most Democratic districts compared to the rest of the Democratic leaning territory. The below graph illustrates that, overlaying the distribution of VT-DI scores on top of the LDI scores of the other states surveyed.

Born out of Sen. Bernie Sanders campaign for Mayor of Burlington in the early 80's, the Progressive party started with seats on the Burlington City Council, and grew to a statewide party that has held a handful of house seats, garnered a significant chunk of votes in heavily contested statewide elections, and naturally, been the source of plenty of tension amongst the Vermont Left. With that in mind, 2010 was something of a unification of the Vermont Left, as Progressives chose to not nominate a candidate for governor, and former gubernatorial candidate Anthony Pollina ran as a D/P fusion candidate in his successful bid for Vermont State Senate. Furthermore, a generic Vermont Democrat performs significantly better than Democrats in Maine, which has allowed for the party to maintain strong control over the legislature, despite having a successful third party contesting otherwise safe seats. Despite being home to a much wider range of ideological diversity than Hawaii, Democrats still maintain comparable supermajorities.

In addition to doing my usual recap, I wanted to use my home state as an example of some of the other things we can think about using LDI data. When redistricting seasons rolls around, suddenly people become a lot more interested in state legislatures, and while Congressional redistricting draws the most attention, there are plenty of major fights playing out over local district lines. Vermont doesn't draw districts until 2012, but all ready there have been very different proposals put forth by the tri-partisan redistricting committee. But those plans have little meaning given the Democratic supermajority, and so any decision about new districts are likely to be made within the party.

As I mentioned before, Vermont's current districts are highly irregular - I'm represented by more states senators (6) than anyone else in the country. In a district that big, campaigns become incredibly expensive undertakings, even in a state as small as Vermont. Additionally, there is considerable scholarship that shows the notion that different sized districts with the number of legislators they elect proportionate to the number of voters within the district does not make for equal representation. Rather, a voter in a large district has a much smaller chance that their vote will be decisive in an election compared to a voter in a regular single-member district. Couple all this with the fact that population growth means Chittenden is in store for another Senate seat, and it becomes clear that something has to change.

The problem for Democrats is that virtually any solution weakens the strong position the six-seat district puts them in. The most common "solution" is to take the town of Milton (R+25), and add it to the Grand Isle/Colchester Senate District, upping the number of senators elected to 2, and maintaining 6 in the rest of the Chittenden County district. In that plan, Democrats in the six-seat district remain safe, and the Grand Isle district becomes slightly more conservative. Someone like Republican House Minority Leader Don Turner, who has been a visible presence lately, might be inclined to run for the seat, and it would certainly prove a close contest. But that solution still leaves you with a six-seat district.

Below I've put together a chart of two possible alternatives to the status-quo plan from above, which will illustrate exactly why Democrats have their hands tied. First is a plan that would divide the six-seat district into two three-seat districts - one containing Burlington and South Burlington, the other containing the rest of Chittenden County. In the second plan, only the city of Burlington is in a two-member district, with South Burlington as part of a larger four-seat district with the rest of the county. Using 2010 State Senate election results, I've estimated who would be elected from these hypothetical new districts.

While the Burlington based districts will be strengthened (a result Progressives would likely prefer), the district covering the rest of the county becomes toss-up territory, with a LDI score similar to Washington County, where all three parties have found success. The only way Democrats could break up the six-seat district and retain their advantage would be to split Burlington in half, which goes against the entire reason Vermont has multi-member districts to begin with - maintaining full communities (and in the Senate's case, countries) as best as possible.

I think I've all ready hit you all with a lot of content for one update, but I'm not quite done with Vermont. Check in soon for Part 2 of my Vermont coverage, where I'll illustrate some other calculations we can look at through the lens of VDI: measuring legislators issue positions relative to the ideology of their district.

A Tale of Two Dakotas

2011-06-14T12:44:00.001-04:00

After a brief hiatus, we are back today with two states to share: North Dakota and South Dakota. Once again the Legislative District Index found itself in presumably Republican territory, but the big question was - are there substantive political differences between these two neighbors?

Both states are currently dominated by massively popular incumbents - South Dakota Sen. John Thune was the only senator up for re-election last cycle to not face a challenger, and former Gov. John Hoeven managed a >50% victory over his token Democratic opposition to claim a seat that Sen. Byron Dorgan had held for two decades.

In addition to being fairly red at the presidential, the states are also known for their surprisingly blue Congressional delegations - it was not long ago that the Democratic caucus included Sens. Dorgan, Tom Daschle, Kent Conrad, and Tim Johnson - after 2012, it may be that only Johnson remains.

So what is happening on the ground in these states, and how do they stack up to the states we've looked at before? Both states feature legislature that use the same districts for both their House and Senate - the only exception being that two South Dakota house seats are divided into individual districts to better assure representation of Native American tribes - those divided districts are noted by the designation "A" or "B" at the end.

The end result is four legislative chambers dominated by Republicans, where Democrats seem to have no natural foothold, and are losing their local popularity. The LDI methodology places North Dakota slightly more Republican than South Dakota, with that gap largely thanks to huge victory margins for Gov. Hoeven. North Dakota will really be a state to watch next time around, as there is a chance that the Republican strength has been inflated to to the former governor's popularity, but the Democratic bench in North Dakota appears noticeably weaker than that of their southern neighbors, which might really be the factor separating the two states.

While we've seen these sort of electoral margins before (especially North Dakota, which is extremely close to Idaho and Nebraska), the way the numbers come together is very different than their ideological neighbors. Below is a chart of 50/50 values for all the states surveyed so far, with the bar representing the middle 50% of districts, the line stretching from the most Democratic to least, and the states arranged from most Democratic on the left, moving more Republican as you move towards the right. You'll notice that unlike Idaho and Nebraska, neither North or South Dakota have any sort of urban area for Democrats to tap in to votes - in South Dakota, two of the three most Democratic districts are on Indian reservations.

To me, this graphic is incredibly important in understanding some of the ideological differences we've had amongst Democrats in the past few years, especially in the Senate. An overwhelming majority of Democrats in the Senate rely on urban populations to push them to victory - without urban voters, they wouldn't be able to fight off rural Republican majorities. But in a rare few cases - North Dakota, South Dakota, I expect Montana as well - those traditional Democratic strongholds don't exist, and so what it means to be a Democrat becomes a significantly different thing as a result of the vastly different audience. Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer has long been an online favorite for the Democratic nomination in 2016, and I can't say I'm not aboard that train, but he's won his elections speaking to an electorate that is very, very different from the kind he would face in a Democratic primary.

As always, these numbers are more easily downloadable from the homepage, where they are available in Google Spreadsheet format. Expect one or two more states being released this week, including my homestate Vermont, where I'm going to go beyond my usual recaps to illustrate the kind of analysis that I think the LDI allows us to perform.

My Clothes Are Packed and I Want to Go, Idaho, Oh, Idaho

2011-06-08T16:07:00.005-04:00

After tackling Washington on Sunday, today I look toward a neighboring state whose legislature is similar in structure to that of Washington, but where Democrats find themselves in much less fertile territory - Idaho. Idaho's 70 legislators are divided into 35 multi-member districts, with each district also elected one state senator. Because of the overlapping districts, I'm again presenting these results as one chart, and will continue to include the 50/50 rating so that everyone can better piece together where these districts fall in comparison to their own states of interest.

Idaho's results are very similar to what we found in Nebraska - a lot of territory outside of Democratic reach, with an urban hub that could support legislators who were not just Democratic in name, but on policy as well. There has been lots of mention on Daily Kos Elections about the possibility for a Boise-based Congressional District if population trends continue through 2022, and from my data, I would not be surprised to see something very similar to what we have in Nebraska today - an urban centered district that is competitive territory, coupled with two seats that would be incredibly difficult to contest. Below I have constructed a graph of both states LDI, and 50/50 scores - not only do they track each other incredibly closely, but as 50/50 shows, even when you don't center the indexes around the state average, they still produce incredibly close results.

We've looked at a couple of states where Democrats have struggled - Maine and Nebraska in particular - and noted that the steeper the dropoff from the Democratic vote centers, the more problems the party seems to have. To this effect, Idaho might actually be in a better position than the other state - despite being incredibly conservative territory to start out with, the 50/50 scores show that first quarter of Democratic-leaning seats, the party remains competitive with Republicans, with performance only tailing off towards the end. You can see this on the graph, in the area where the red dotted-line first crosses the blue dotted-line until they cross again.

Now, granted, we are only talking about 25% of the legislature, and that is certainly no majority. But given the current composition, that isn't a bad benchmark to aim for. Growth in the Boise area will be conducive to stronger Democratic performance, and the 2008 election should have offered a bit of hope to Idaho Democrats, as Obama outperformed Kerry's numbers across the board, following the national swing. Picking up these seats will grow the bench, encourage others to run, and hopefully expand the playing field even further.

Finally, as a housekeeping note, I have been sorting out the remaining states and organizing them by how good their available information is. So far, the one state that I can find only abysmal data for is Massachusetts. Any readers able to link me to solid election results provided by the state? In return, I'll share with you my favorite Idaho song: