District-level Data

One of our goals for 2019 is to present more raw data about all legislative and congressional districts in the state. We are in the process of converting our old, clunky spreadsheets into AirTable data bases, the format our Crib Sheets have used since 2017.

You can sort districts, filter them based on certain criteria (such as see only Republican-held seats) and show and hide fields. Don’t worry. You won’t affect the underlying data.

Partisan Lean

We calculate the partisan lean of a district in relation to the state as a whole. For each district, we calculate the average statewide Democratic candidate’s vote percentage, measured head-to-head against the Republican, then compare that number to the average statewide performance. Positive numbers indicate the district leans more Democratic than the state as a whole. Negative numbers indicate a district leans more Republican than the state as a whole.

We find this measure provides clearer pictures of how the partisan makeup of the electorate changes within a district over time, because it removes “noise” caused by changing turnout from one election to the next, the presence or absence of minor party candidates and the presence or absence of challengers in individual districts. In the table below, PRES Shift measures the change in partisan lean, relative to the state, between 2004 and 2016, and GOV Shift measures the same thing from 2002 to 2014. We’ll update these tables with 2018 results soon.

Average Statewide Democrat

This table shows the average statewide Democratic candidate’s performance, measured head-to-head against the Republican candidate, in each district as it is drawn today from 2002 to 2016.

We’ll be publishing additional data sets in the coming months.