Data

Inside Elections’ Baseline captures a congressional district’s political performance by combining all federal and state election results over the past four election cycles into a single score. This index aims to approximate what the “typical” Democrat or Republican might receive in any given district.

To calculate Inside Elections’ Baseline, we include all contested partisan elections for federal and statewide offices (executive or constitutional) in the four most recent cycles, as well as any special or off-year elections during that span. The only district-based elections we consider are U.S. House races.

These results are then combined in an index estimating the strength of a “typical” Democratic or Republican candidate in any particular congressional district.
This project requires a comprehensive collection of statewide election results by congressional district. But because most states don’t officially report down ballot races at this level, we calculated them manually.

1. Data
   Our first step was to collect data for each election of interest. We gathered precinct-level results from four main sources: official returns were pulled directly from state or county elections websites whenever feasible, while gaps were filled with invaluable data from VEST, OpenElections, and the MIT Election Lab.
   
2. Assigning Precincts to Districts
   A key part of this process is determining which precincts fit into each district. For elections conducted in 2022, this is fairly straightforward: simply check the 2022 House results to see where each precinct was assigned, then apply that to the statewide races.
   
3. Splitting Precincts
   After compiling a list of precincts and their corresponding districts, there’s one final hurdle: split precincts. Although precincts are usually the smallest unit of election administration, they can still be divided between multiple districts. And when that happens, there’s almost no way to know exactly how its votes were allocated.
   
4. Putting It Together
   Once all precincts have been properly split and allocated, the final step is to add everything up to the district level, then repeat this process for each election of interest in the district.Baseline’s major advantage — its depth — is quickly clear. The two most commonly cited elections at the congressional district level are the most recent House and presidential races, both of which saw the Democrat win by around 18 points in this seat. But with the added context of a dozen down ballot races, we get a better sense of the 9th’s elasticity, and of each party’s “true” vote ceiling or floor.

VAR measures the strength of a political candidate relative to a typical candidate from their party within the same district. That initial benchmark is derived using Inside Elections’ Baseline, which captures a congressional district’s political performance by combining all federal and state election results over the past four election cycles into a single score. VAR is simply the difference between a candidate’s share of the vote and their party’s Baseline. A higher VAR indicates a strong performance relative to expectations.

Across all House races in 2022 featuring one Democrat against one Republican (therefore excluding the 35 districts that went uncontested by either party), the average member-elect of Congress finished with a 2.2 VAR. Out of those 400, 312 (78 percent) earned a positive VAR — meaning they not only won their district, but outperformed a typical candidate from their party in the process. This tracks closely with our 2022 VAR calculations for the Senate, where 75 percent of members-elect finished in the green.