MIDTERMS: VERY DIFFERENT RACE TYPES

Republicans > Democrats > Independents > Libertarians

This is the first in a series looking at last month’s election results for our state elected officials. That’s our:

• Constitutional officers (like governor, attorney general, secretary of state)

• State Representatives

• State Senators

Overall, of the votes cast in each race they participated in:

• Republicans averaged 68%

• Democrats averaged 41%

• Independents averaged 22%

• Libertarians averaged 14%

You can see that in the chart below. (If that seems incongruous, that’s okay. Keep reading.)

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5 Types of races

In this post, we’re analyzing the 5 types of races and how candidates fared in each. The 5 types are:

• 3 candidates: Republican, Democrat and Libertarian

• 2 candidates:

  • Republican, Democrat

  • Republican, Libertarian

  • Republican, Independent

  • Democrat, Libertarian

In any of the above 5 scenarios, Republicans averaged more than Democrats; Democrats averaged more than Independents; and Independents averaged more than Libertarians. However, it’s worth noting there were only 2 races with Independents so that’s a pretty small sample size.

Remember that 14% for Libertarians shown above?  That seemed high, right? That’s because it took into account their average in ALL race types, including those with only 2 candidates. But when in a race with candidates from both major parties, Libertarians average 3% – a big drop from 19% against only a Democrat and 20% against only a Republican. But that explains the higher numbers above compared to the lower numbers below.

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But…. there is variation WITHIN these groups

How individual races turned out within each of these five types varied.

For example, within the 3 candidate model (Republican, Democrat and Libertarian), Senator Jonathan Dismang pulled in an impressive 80%, while his colleague Senator Jane English won with 52%. This is in part due to the more purple nature of Senator English’s district compared to Senator Dismang’s more red district.

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Republicans won 91% of the time

Of the 79 races that featured Republicans running for state offices, they won all but 7 of them. Two of these were State Senate seats and five were State House seats. Three were in Little Rock, 1 was in Conway, 1 was in Fort Smith, 1 was in Fayetteville, and 1 was in the Marianna area. 

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Keep these 2 things in mind

As we move forward in the series, keep these 5 race types in mind. While there are overarching trends, like the strength of the Republican party, it’s still worth keeping a couple of things in mind when comparing races:

1. How Red / Blue / Purple is the district?

2. How many candidates were in the race?

Number 1 above is less relevant as we look at the Constitutional officers, which is where we will start next. See you tomorrow with that.

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