Quantifying Trump's impact on House races

quote:

---

If we focus exclusively on districts where the margin of victory was less than 15 points, such that the seat was conceivably in the balance, the picture that emerges is quite different.

In these 114 districts, candidates bearing Trump endorsements underperformed their baseline by a whopping five points, while Republicans who were without Trump’s blessing overperformed their baseline by 2.2 points — a remarkable difference of more than seven points.

To give a clearer sense of what this cost House Republicans, we can examine the election returns visually. In the chart below, the lower-right-hand quadrant shows races in which Republicans lost (the Republican margin was negative) even though the district had favored Republicans in recent elections (the expected Republican margin was positive):

[Graphic]

The orange dots, representing Trump-endorsed candidates, are plentiful in the area where candidates performed below expectations, while they are almost nonexistent on the other side. In other words, nearly all Trump-endorsed candidates in competitive races underperformed their expectations.

In some races, Trump-backed candidates fell well short of expectations but still won their seats. For example, Lauren Boebert, one of the House’s loudest election deniers (sic), has a tiny 1,100-vote lead in her R+7 district, which should have been an easy win for the GOP. (The expectation would be a 57-43 win.)

---