Tag Archives: Montana

Election Night Preview — Part Four — Prime Time Hour Three (10:00 to 10:59 P.M. Eastern)

After the heavy numbers of the previous two hours of prime time, the final hour of prime time represents a slight slowing of polls closing.  Of course, that will be made up for as several of the close states will either be projected or turn into all night counts.

There are three partial closings and three full closings this hour.  On the partial closing, we have the second of two 9:00 p.m. local time closings with the eastern (Central Time Zone) part of North Dakota.  You also have all but the panhandle of Idaho closing at 8:00 p.m. local time (Mountain Time Zone).  For both of these states, the part closing represents the majority of the state.  The last partial closing is the one exception to the general trend.  Oregon is the one start in which the majority of the state is in the western part of the state.  So this post will only cover the partial closing in Idaho and North Dakota with Oregon in the next post.  The three full closings are Montana and Utah at 8:00 p.m. local time and Nevada at 7:00 p.m. local time.

Idaho, like Wyoming in the previous post, is solidly red.  If Democrats are competitive at either the presidential level or for either of the congressional seats, then it will have been a very good night for Democrats.   The one contest of interest is a ballot proposition seeking to go to a top four primary with ranked choice voting.   While Idaho is not likely to turn blue anytime soon, a top four primary with ranked choice voting might mean more moderate Republicans representing Idaho in the future. Continue Reading...

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Georgia Runoff

The last election of 2022 will conclude on Tuesday with the runoff election for U.S. Senator in Georgia.    While there are still some races that will go to recounts, all of the statewide and congressional races seem to be outside the margin at which a recount could make a difference.  (There are three races with margins between 500 and 600 votes — Arizona Attorney General, California Thirteenth District, and Colorado Third District.  In the Minnestoa Senate recount in 2008, the net swing from the original results to the recount results was 450 votes with an additional 87 votes gained in the election contest.  The closest of the three races going to recount is 511.   While other recounts have resulted in bigger swings, they were in races with bigger margins and Minnesota remains the largest swing that changed the results of a race.

The significance of the Senate race is not quite as big as it was in 2021 due to the Republicans apparently taking the House (but the Republican’s inability to reach a consensus on the next Speaker will be the subject of a future post) and the fact that the Democrats already have 50 seats.  But the result still matters for five key reasons.

First, the additional seat will alter the composition of committees.  With a 50-50 Senate, the committees are evenly divided.  While the rules currently allow a bill or nomination to proceed to the Senate floor on a tie vote, a 51-49 Senate would result in the Democrats having a majority on the committees. Continue Reading...

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The Midterms-Preview (Part 4)

By 9 p.m. Central ST, we will be getting some results from the early states which will give us some idea of how the night is going with a strong emphasis on the some.  As noted in Part 1 of this series, every state treats the counting of mail-in votes.  In some states, like Missouri and Texas, mail-in votes are likely to be the first results reported.  In other states, like Michigan, those votes are likely to reported after the election day results.  And for election day results, precinct sizes (more importantly the number of voters per election judge) and other factors have historically resulted in longer lines at closing time in urban area.  When combined with the number of precincts in urban areas, in early states, rural areas are likely to report a greater share of their results in the first couple of hours.  Both of these factors distort the conclusiveness of early vote counts (which is why the best analysts start looking at what vote is still outstanding — both where that vote is and the total number of votes — in forecasting whether it is possible to call the race).    But by this time of the evening, there is some hint at the level of turnout in the areas that tend to vote Democratic and the areas that vote Republican and which way swing areas are swinging.

In turn, this information gives us some idea of the accuracy of pre-election polls.   In viewing pre-election polls, there are three things to remember.  First, in viewing them, you should focus on two things — margins and the size of the “undecided” voters.  In every poll, there will be some undecided voters (and, because voters tend not to want to waste votes, the supporters of third-party candidates should be treated as undecided as a significant share of them will move to one of the two major candidates by election day).  Because undecided voters will not split 50-50, a large pool of undecided voters makes the margin less reliable.  An eight percent lead with ten percent undecided is more likely to hold than a twelve percent lead with twenty percent undecided.  On the other hand, it is likely that both candidates will pick up some undecideds.  So both candidates are likely to end up with something higher than their last poll number.  Second, in looking at the margin, every poll has a margin of error (typically between three percent and four percent).  That margin of error applies to each candidate.   Which means, in theory, that even a well-constructed poll can be off on the margin by six or seven percent..  Part of the error is that every pollster has their model on who is likely to vote and how to weight responders to overcome response bias.  Some years the actual pool of voters is bluer than the model shows and in other years the actual pool of voters is redder than the model shows.  Finally, a poll is a snapshot in time.  Events occurring after the poll is taken will move a small percentage of voters (both undecided voters and voters who were tentatively supporting a candidate).  In short, it is highly probable that the polls will be off by some margin.  And while the direction and size of the error will not be uniform nationally, the early returns can give an idea of the direction and size of the error.

As things stand four days out, the polls seem to be indicating a red ripple which will switch a narrow Democratic majority in the House to a narrow Republican majority in the House.  The Senate could go either way and the hold of state offices could swing either way as well. Continue Reading...

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Redistricting — Montana

Montana is unique among the  states that gained a seat from reapportionment in that it will only have two seats in Congress.  With only two districts, there is limited room for playing games with district lines — every move to make one district safer makes the other district less safe.  By contrast, as the number of districts grow, it’s possible to offset big changes in one district with small changes in multiple districts.  In other words, while it’s possible to pack (putting a lot of members of the other party in a small number of districts) and crack (splitting potential pockets of support for other parties among multiple districts) when you have a large number of districts, you have to either pack or crack when you have two districts.  Simply put, the choice is do you have two roughly similar districts (with the majority party favored in both by cracking the supporters of the other voters among two districts) or do you go for one safer district and one somewhat vulnerable district (with the supporters of the minority party packed into one district).

The other thing about the small states is that they fall into two categories.  Some states (like Utah, Nevada, Oregon, and Kansas) have significant metropolitan areas that are large enough to be the base of one or more districts.  Other states like Mississippi and Iowa really lack one metropolitan area that is large enough to be the base of a district.  Montana falls into this latter category.

In looking at potential maps, I did two alternatives.  One was a basic east-west divide somewhat similar to the way that Montana did when they used to have two districts.  While the exact borders can be adjusted.  A basic east-west divide will lead to one safe Republican district and one safe-lean Republican district depending on how aggressive the legislature is in moving Democrats into the western District (which would be the Democrats best chances at winning a district).    You get the same thing with a basic north-south divide.  To get a Democratic district requires something of a jagged semi-circle with tentacles reaching out to connect the Democratic pockets of the state and counter-tentacles reaching the reddest parts of the southwestern part of the state.  Since the state as a whole is safe Republican (around 53-42),  it is much easier for the Republicans to get two districts than for Democrats to get a real chance at splitting the two districts. Continue Reading...

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Redistricting 2021 — The Numbers

On Monday, four days ahead of its latest target date and almost four months behind the statutory date, the Census Bureau released the national and state-level results from the Census including the apportionment numbers that determine how many representatives each get.  As can be expected, there are multiple different tables summarizing the data in different ways for us number geeks.

The bottom line table shows the apportionment population (both those living in the state and those residing overseas — like military personnel — who call that state home), the number of representatives that each state is getting, and the change in representation.   We will get back to the change in a minute, but the big level number is that the apportionment population is slightly over 331 million.  As such, the average size (mean) of each congressional district is just under 761 thousand.  Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming have fewer people than the average congressional district.  While the apportionment formula does not work for calculating the population needed for the first representative, even Wyoming has enough population to be entitled to three-quarters of a representative.

If, D.C. and Puerto Rico were states, Puerto Rico would be just ahead of Utah (which has four representatives) and just behind Connecticut (which has five representatives) and D.C. would be between Vermont and Alaska.  Given that Puerto Rico is only slightly larger than Utah (which was not close to getting a fifth representative and far enough behind Connecticut, Puerto Rico would be due for four representatives.  If  both were states, the five states that would lose a representative would have been Oregon, Colorado, and Montana (all of which gained a seat), California (which lost a seat), and Minnesota (which barely avoided losing a seat).  The chart of priority values that allows us to consider the impact of adding Puerto Rico and D.C. also shows that Minnesota barely held onto its last seat and New York barely lost its seat.  Apparently, given the formula, Minnesota would have lost that seat if it had 24 fewer people, and New York would have kept its seat if it had 89 more people.  (The disparity in numbers is caused by the fact that the two states have different number of seats. Continue Reading...

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Election Night Preview — Part 4 (10 PM to 11 PM EST)

It is very highly unlikely that we will have a projected winner when the clock strikes 10 on the east coast.  Mathematically, it’s possible as by 10:01 p.m. polls will officially be closed in states with 450 electoral votes.  But, practically speaking, it would take all of the toss-up states that have closed before then to have enough votes counted that the networks felt comfortable projecting them, and they would all have to go the same way.  Even in years like 2008, enough of the Democratic vote is in states in which polls close at 10 or 11 p.m. EST, that it would take flipping states like Texas and Georgia to have a shot at reaching 270 before 11 p.m.

Looking at 2016, the first battleground state — Ohio — was called at 10:36 p.m.  Depending on how things play out with mail-in ballots and early voting, some of the battleground states might get called faster, but others are likely to be called much later.

In this hour, we will have partial closures in Idaho, North Dakota, and Oregon.  In North Dakota and Idaho, the majority of the population is in the part of the state that closes.  As such, we will get a good idea about the state from the precincts that have closed.  On the other hand, only a tiny part of Oregon will close at 10 p.m. and all of the key races will have to wait another hour.   For North Dakota and Idaho, none of the races are expected to be particularly close.  So those contests should be called shortly after 11. Continue Reading...

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Cut Time

A political party serves two fundamental purposes.

First, people form and join political parties to advance policy.  (Of course, there are disagreements on the exact priorities or the specific details of policy proposals.)  In fact, one of the biggest mistakes that the Framers made was not anticipating that, once there were elections for federal offices, the groups in New Jersey that favored rural farmers over “urban” merchants would unite with similar groups in Georgia (and vice versa for the groups that favored merchants) rather than stay isolated in their own states.  Simply put, if you want a single-payer health care system, you are more likely to get it by forming a large group with other supporters of that type of proposal than working on your own.

Second, the way that political parties try to advance policy is by getting their candidates elected to office.  You can’t pass a single-payer system if the opponents of single-payer have the majority in Congress or control the White House.  And political parties win elections by finding good candidates and raising and spending money to support those candidates.   Especially in the year before the election, money tends to be spent on creating tools (like voter databases and helping state parties) that are available to all candidates that run on the party’s ticket.  And at this point in time, with the exception of the last handful of state primaries, the parties have their candidates. Continue Reading...

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2018 Mid-term Election — Rocky Mountains

While it’s not an exact East-West line, the Rocky Mountain region has seen a lot of change in recent years.  While not the same in every state, the southern part of the region has trended a little more toward the Democrats while the northern part has, maybe, gotten even redder.

In Montana, we have a weird combination of races.  For Senate, even with President Trump firing with both barrels due to Senator Tester shooting down Trump’s misguided cronyism at the Department of Veteran’s Affair, Senator Tester seems to have a somewhat comfortable lead in the Senate race.  On the other hand, WWE-wannabe Greg Gianforte seems to be holding on (by a less comfortable margin) in the U.S. House race.

In Wyoming, the Democrats really have very little chance at picking up any of the races.  A successful outcome would be holding the Republicans beneath 55% in any of the three main races. Continue Reading...

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Election Night 2016 — What to Look For (Part Four)

fireworksAs 9:00 p.m. rolls around, enough states have been closed long enough that exit polls become less significant, and raw vote count becomes more significant.  If the exit polls and early returns in the state had been clear enough, those states would have already been called.  The question at this point in time is which if any of the contested states and races have been called.  While enough states remain that technically nobody will have yet won the White House, or the majority in the Senate, or the majority in the House, it should be becoming clear whether it is simply a matter of waiting for the polls to close in “safe” states or if it is going to be a long night waiting for the last votes in a handful of states.  While the race is not yet over, the next two hours should determine the winners.

9:00 p.m. (EST) — The remaining polls close in Michigan, Kansas, South Dakota, and Texas.  Additionally, the polls close in Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.  Colorado and Wisconsin are the last of the “at risk” states that are part of Secretary Clinton’s easiest path to 270.  Arizona and Nebraska 2 join Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, and Maine 2 in the batch of electoral votes that Trump absolutely needs to get to 270.

Continue Reading...

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