Tag: BP Analysis
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Incumbent governors had a 100% re-election rate in 2020
Eleven states held elections for governor this year, including nine where the incumbent ran for re-election. All nine governors up for re-election won another term this year. Republicans had greater partisan risk in 2020; the eleven states electing a governor included seven with Republican governors and four with Democratic governors. Republicans won eight of those…
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13 percent of open congressional seats changed party hands in 2020
Forty congressional incumbents—four in the Senate and 36 in the House—did not run for re-election in 2020. Of these 40 open seats, five (12.5 percent) changed party hands as a result of the 2020 elections. All five changes occurred in the House, where Democrats picked up three open seats previously held by Republicans and Republicans…
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A closer look at voter turnout in Retained and Boomerang Pivot counties
Ballotpedia has been analyzing the 206 Pivot Counties that voted for Barack Obama (D) in 2008 and 2012 and Donald Trump (R) in 2016. This year, we have introduced two new categories: Retained Pivot Counties, which voted for Trump again in 2020, and Boomerang Pivot Counties, which voted for Joe Biden (D). Based on unofficial…
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Retention elections and judicial partisanship
State supreme court justices facing retention elections won re-election more often than their counterparts in states using other systems of judicial selection, according to Ballotpedia’s recently-published study on state supreme courts. Between 2008 and 2019, 155 justices have faced retention elections. Incumbent justices won 152 (98%) of these elections. Since 2008, there have been 196…
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2020’s state supreme court elections resulted in changes on two of country’s least homogenous courts
The partisan makeup of two of the country’s most politically divided state supreme courts changed as a result of the 2020 elections, according to a Ballotpedia ranking of states by supreme court partisanship. As part of the Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship study, Ballotpedia assigned each state supreme court justice a partisan confidence score based on…
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A closer look at the demographics of Retained and Boomerang Pivot Counties
Ballotpedia has been analyzing the 206 Pivot Counties that voted for Barack Obama (D) in 2008 and 2012 and Donald Trump (R) in 2016. This year, we have introduced two new categories: Retained Pivot Counties, which voted for Trump again in 2020, and Boomerang Pivot Counties, which voted for Joe Biden (D). Based on unofficial…
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President Donald Trump leads in endorsement win rates among Ballotpedia’s tracked influencers
During the 2020 election cycle, Ballotpedia tracked candidate endorsements from five noteworthy influencers: President Donald Trump (R), President-elect Joe Biden (D), former President Barack Obama (D), Vice President Mike Pence (R), and Senator Bernie Sanders (I). Obama issued the most endorsements in 2020 elections at 232, according to Ballotpedia’s count. Of these 232 endorsed candidates,…
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Trump has appointed second-most federal judges through December 1 of a president’s fourth year
Donald Trump has appointed and the Senate has confirmed 227 Article III federal judges through December 1, 2020, his fourth year in office. This is the second-most Article III judicial appointments through this point in all presidencies since Jimmy Carter (D). The Senate had confirmed 260 of Carter’s appointees at this point in his term.…
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Ballotpedia publishes special study on state supreme court partisanship
Ballotpedia recently published a study on state supreme courts entitled “Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship”. Among the findings, the study showed that there has been an increase in partisanship on the state courts over the past ten years and that there is a correlation between the partisanship of justices selected for state supreme courts and the…
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Four Pivot Counties flip from Trump to Biden as results continue to be updated
Ballotpedia has been analyzing the 206 Pivot Counties that voted for Barack Obama (D) in 2008 and 2012 and Donald Trump (R) in 2016 by creating two new categories: Retained Pivot Counties, which voted for Trump again in 2020, and Boomerang Pivot Counties, which voted for Joe Biden (D). The analysis continues to shift as…