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BREAKING NEWS
General elections are frequently discussed, but rarely understood. Commentary about general election outcomes often resorts to pointing fingers and saying “I told you so,” instead of focusing on available data and objective facts. We believe that the largest contributing factor to this unfortunate phenomenon is the lack of a data-driven model capable of explaining general election outcomes. For this reason, we’ve developed such a model. This model can be expressed in two different ways: (1) qualitatively in a three-layer model for abstract discussion, and (2) formulaically for precise calculations. Let’s start with the qualitative three-layer model. As shown in the diagram below, the base of this model is Voter Registration, followed by Turnout, and finally topped with Support.
In mid-May of this year, Florida politicos on both sides of the aisle turned their attention towards Duval County, where the race for Jacksonville Mayor was coming down to the wire. Despite the fact that Democrats made up 4.3% more of the registered voter base than Republicans in Jacksonville, Republican turnout exceeded Democratic turnout by 3.2% by the end of Election Day. With turnout numbers tilted in their favor, Republicans were hopeful that their nominee, Daniel Davis, would come out victorious. That didn’t happen. Instead, Democrat Donna Deegan won with 52.1% of the vote, besting Davis’s 47.9%. Despite strong Republican turnout – bolstered by the Florida GOP’s get-out-the-vote efforts – the Republican candidate had lost, and many on the right were left scratching their heads and asking, “What went wrong?” In this article, we’ll be answering that question through the lens of the Victory Formula, a model developed by our team for the purpose of understanding general election outcomes. If you’d like to take a deeper dive into this formula, you can read this article explaining how it works. But for our purposes today, all you need to know is that the formula takes in nine variables (three about voter registration, three about turnout, and three about support for each candidate), and produces the exact margin by which a Republican candidate wins (or loses) a head-to-head general election. Since the election in Jacksonville has already happened, we were lucky enough to have exact final numbers for voter registration and turnout, meaning all that’s left for us to understand is the layer we refer to as “support.” This layer has three simple variables: Republican loyalty, Democratic loyalty, and nonpartisan loyalty. Republican loyalty refers to the percentage of Republican turnout that resulted in votes for the Republican candidate. For instance, if 100 Republicans voted in the election, but only 75 of them voted for the Republican candidate, then Republican loyalty would be 75%. Democratic loyalty refers to the same concept, just on the Democratic side. And finally, nonpartisan loyalty simply refers to the percentage of the nonpartisan/third-party that went to the Republican candidate. None of these variables can be found in the election result data. Instead, we must use the Victory Formula to make inferences about their values, and from there, draw conclusions about why the race ended up the way it did. But there’s an issue: with three unknown variables, there are many different combinations that could result in Deegan’s 4.2-point victory. In fact, these potential “solutions” can be mapped out on a three-dimensional surface:
Data analysis always helps – even on the School Board It’s not just political polling that benefits from rigorous data analysis. This past week, our firm was tapped to do some impromptu data analysis to check if a Collier County, FL School Board member’s claim was accurate. It turns out, it wasn’t – and we had the receipts to prove it. In November of 2022, Collier County elected an all-new conservative majority to their School Board, and the county’s superintendent “stepped away” from the job not long after. The ensuing process to hire a new superintendent was contentious, but eventually the Board decided on Dr. Leslie Ricciardelli, a longtime Collier County educator, and the next step was to iron out a contract. There were two schools of thought on the matter. One wing of the Board supported Dr. Ricciardelli’s request to be paid $305,000 per year. The other wing wanted to offer a lower salary, as that’s what was advertised in the job posting. At a public School Board meeting, conservative activist Rachael Schaaf questioned whether this $305,000 salary was a responsible use of taxpayer money. In response, School Board member Stephanie Lucarelli – the most outspoken proponent of the salary increase – argued that $305,000 was “in line with other superintendents across the state.” It is this statement that we were tasked with fact-checking. To do so, we collected data on superintendents’ salaries from every county in the state of Florida, as well as each county’s total student enrollment. We plotted this data in the chart below, and with the help of a trusty trendline, we clearly showed that the proposed $305,000 salary was out of line with counties with similar enrollments.
The belief has long been held that, in order for a candidate to win an election, they must be popular. After all, it makes sense: who would vote for someone they don’t like? While this age-old belief isn’t entirely false, the reality is far more nuanced, and varies greatly depending on whether we’re talking about primary elections versus general elections, crowded fields versus head-to-head matchups, and small-town races versus big-money slugfests. Let’s work through several different scenarios in order to unpack this. If you’re the only candidate with a sizeable campaign war chest in a race against unsophisticated competitors, then yes, your spending should primarily be aimed at gaining popularity and building Name ID. Your popularity alone will likely be enough for you to sail across the finish line in first place. However, what if it’s a crowded Republican primary in which several candidates are well-funded? Now, things are different. In this scenario, it’s unlikely that any one candidate will win more than 50% of the vote, so you’re no longer seeking a majority – only a plurality. In this case, even if a majority of voters like you, what good does that do? It’s not enough voter voters to like you. They need to like you more than your competitors. Let’s use a real-world example here. In both our Florida and Iowa polls regarding the 2024 Republican presidential primary, more GOP voters had a positive opinion of Ron DeSantis than of Donald Trump. Put simply, DeSantis was more “popular” than Trump. Nevertheless, Trump annihilated DeSantis in head-to-head matchups, winning by 15% in Florida and 19% in Iowa. The moral of the story here is that, in such a situation, it’s not about whether or not people like you, it’s about whether they support you more strongly than they support your opponent. Building such support inherently requires taking risks. If you only make wishy-washy statements designed to appease everyone, and your competitor makes bold statements that strike a chord in the hearts of voters, the voters will choose your competitor over you nine times out of ten. They very well may like you, but they won’t like you enough to vote for you over your competitor. Of course, most elections aren’t crowded primaries between sophisticated and well-funded campaigns. Most are simple, and can be won by hitting base hits, not home runs. Nevertheless, it’s crucial to know the difference, and how this difference affects your strategy. To round out this discussion, let’s refocus our discussion on general elections. Once you’ve made it out of the primary and are now facing a Democrat, the election becomes much more about popularity. General elections are, in most cases, a head-to-head race. Thus, whoever can win over 50% of voters plus one wins the race. Of course, the ease of accomplishing this varies greatly depending on the district. If 70% of likely voters in your district are Republicans, it’s much easier for you to win than in a district where only 35% are Republicans. But regardless of the partisan makeup of your district, the general axiom remains true: the more popular candidate wins. And in many districts, that means winning over nonpartisan and third-party voters, which requires you to conduct targeted outreach and fine-tune your messaging. (Hint: if you’re in a purple district, the “Top Issues” page on your website should shift closer to the center of the political spectrum during the general election.) In summary, although popularity is a key factor in most elections, it’s certainly not the end of the story. In many cases, intensity of support is more important than breadth of support. Your strategy should take into account the makeup of the electorate, your competitors, and the type of election. Best of luck!
Every time poll results regarding the 2024 Republican presidential primary are released to the public, the media goes into a frenzy to report on who’s winning, by how much, and in which states. Twitter users speculate endlessly about the implications of the latest numbers and whether Trump or DeSantis has the edge (still many months away from the first votes being cast). In many instances, it’s been our firm releasing these poll results, and despite the widespread coverage they receive, the mainstream media and the general public seem to have missed perhaps the most interesting insight of them all: the Trump-DeSantis divide clearly falls along socioeconomic lines. We first uncovered this insight in our April poll of likely 2024 GOP primary voters in Florida . The chart below shows the Trump-DeSantis split among lower, middle, and upper class voters.
Since Donald Trump announced his bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination in November of last year, his endorsements have rolled in in waves. The first flurry of endorsements came right after he announced his candidacy, and the most recent came in the wake of his indictment and subsequent arrest. With dozens of congressional Republicans already endorsing Trump, candidates for public office are justifiably wondering whether they themselves should endorse the former president’s 2024 bid. To help candidates decide whether to endorse Trump in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, we’ve identified four key questions that candidates should consider before making such a pivotal decision: 1. Are you more concerned about winning the primary election or the general election? 2. How popular is Trump in your state? What about in your district? 3. Have your competitors endorsed anyone? 4. Is Trump actually going to win the Republican primary? In the remainder of this blog post, we’ll dive deeper into each of these questions and explain how candidates can use them to make a final determination on whether to issue an endorsement. 1. Are you more concerned about winning the primary election or the general election? Endorsing Donald Trump will likely have two effects: (1) many conservatives will be pleased, and (2) many others will be angered. It’s no secret that Trump is a polarizing figure, so it’s important to consider how the voters you’re courting will respond to your decision. If you’re already the presumptive Republican nominee in a left-leaning district, that means you should be much more concerned about winning the general election than the Republican primary, and therefore should be courting middle-of-the-road voters. Most GOP voters will side with you over a Democrat no matter what, so it’s not as important to appease GOP voters as it is to win the support of independents and moderate Democrats. In this case, it would probably be unwise to endorse Donald Trump, as he’s typically unpopular among non-GOP voters (in most districts). On the other hand, if you’re running in a deep-red district, winning the Republican primary will almost certainly translate to winning the general election. In this case, it’s not particularly important to appease anyone other than GOP primary voters, so endorsing Trump would be far less risky, assuming that Republicans in your district still support the former president. Your own situation will likely fall somewhere between these two extremes, and there are several other factors to consider, which we’ll soon discuss. Nevertheless, it’s extremely important to remember which voters you’re trying to win over when making this crucial decision. 2. How popular is Trump in your state? What about in your district? This question is pretty self-explanatory. You probably shouldn’t endorse Trump if the vast majority of your electorate dislikes him. And, conversely, you probably should endorse him if the vast majority of your electorate does like him. However, it’s not always easy to gauge the true sentiments of your electorate without some real, unbiased, up-to-date data. FiveThirtyEight is a great resource for finding this data via political polls. The 2024 presidential election, and Donald Trump in general, are hot topics, so it’s likely that there’s a recent poll in your state (or maybe even your district) on Trump’s favorability and/or whether he should be the 2024 GOP nominee. If you can’t find sufficient data to make your decision, you can also reach out to our team to commission your own proprietary poll among voters in your district. It's important to not just consider whether Trump is popular or not, but also whether voters support his new presidential bid. For instance, our polling in Florida shows that many DeSantis 2024 supporters still hold Trump in high regard, but just don’t want him to be the nominee. For this reason, it’s crucial to look at all aspects of the issue, and not just simple toplines. 3. Have your competitors endorsed anyone? Your competitors can and should influence your decision of whether or not to make an endorsement, but the calculus here can get tricky. If no one has endorsed a 2024 contender, then it may be safest to stick with the crowd and stay out of it. But, the first to endorse a 2024 candidate could get a boost from supporters of that same candidate. There’s also the confounding factor – although one you should never count on unless you’ve had a definitive conversation about such – that your endorsement of a candidate could result in a reciprocal endorsement from that very same candidate. Even still, there are more factors to consider here. What if, for example, you’re in a ten-way Republican primary where all nine of the other candidates have endorsed Trump? Maybe, purely for strategic purposes, endorsing some other candidate besides Trump could help you differentiate yourself and carve out just enough support to win a plurality of votes. Clearly, the consideration of your competitors’ decisions can be a tricky yet crucial task. 4. Is Trump actually going to win the Republican primary? This is probably the most contentious question of the four because it requires a fair degree of speculation. No one can say with certainty who the 2024 Republican nominee will be, but most politicos would agree that Trump has the best chance right now. Our recent polling in Iowa showed Trump with a 30-point lead over the entire field, and our Florida poll showed Trump beating Ron DeSantis in his own state. If you choose not to endorse anyone (or worse, endorse one of Trump’s competitors), and Trump becomes the nominee anyway, it could put you in a tough spot. Republican voters might question how much of an “America First conservative” you truly are if you refused to endorse the de facto founder of the America First movement when he needed it the most. However, if you endorse Trump and then he fails to secure the Republican nomination, that wouldn’t be a great look for you, either. Clearly, there are many factors to consider before making your decision, and it sure isn’t black and white. Remember to (1) remember which voters you’re courting, (2) consider your electorate’s opinion, (3) account for competitors’ decisions, and (4) think big picture. By asking yourself the four questions outlined above, we hope you will gain more clarity on the important decision of whether to endorse Donald Trump for President. Best of luck!
