After the the defeat of Democrats in 2016, the midterm election in 2018 was an opportunity to democrats to take control to the legislative branch, while the republicans looked for keep their voters engaged and strength their position. This small report aims to provide a brief insight about the voter turnout, the fundraising and the expenses made during the campaign as well as the election’s results.
The data comes from The United States Elections Project, leaded by Dr. Michael P. McDonald. The mission of the project is to provide timely and accurate election statistics, electoral laws, research reports, and other useful information regarding the United States electoral system. By providing this information, the project seeks to inform the people of the United States on how their electoral system works, how it may be improved, and how they can participate in it.
Did voters turn out?
In the United States, midterm elections typically see lower voter turnout than presidential elections. However, with so much buzz surrounding the 2018 midterm elections, turnout was expected to be higher than for previous midterm elections. Was this the case?
As we can see in the scatter plot, a higher proportions of eligible voters turned out in nearly every state, showing that voter turnout was higher in 2018 than 2014.
Which state had the highest turnout?
Minnesota had a substantially higher turnout than other states. Furhter, we can see clusters emerge, such as Colorado, Oregon, Wisconsin, and Montana.
How much was spent on Senate races?
Control of the Senate was up for grabs in the 2018 midterm elections, and along with it President Trump’s ability to shape the judicial branch of government. Both parties fought hard to control this chamber of Congress, so how did this translate to fundraising?
The plot above shows the distribution of funds received by Senate candidates during the 2018 election cycle. From the histogram it’s clear that he Fundraising’s distribution is heavily skewed to the right with some severe outliers above $40 million; however, it’s impossible to identify the outlying Senate races from the histogram because data are naturally aggregated into bins.
Which candidate spent the most?
As you saw, most Senate campaigns raised under $1M and the vast majority raised under $20M, so what races raised these astronomical amounts?
The Senate races in Texas and Florida received the biggest contributions.
Mapping change in voter turnout
We already saw that voter turnout increased in nearly every state in the 2018 midterm elections compared to the 2014 midterms. The map shows the change in voter turnout between these two midterm elections.
We can see from the map that Minnesota had the highest voter turnout, while Missouri had the largest increase in turnout.
Mapping Senate winners
There were 33 Senate seats on the ballot in the 2018 midterms (plus two special elections that we’ll ignore in this analysis). The map below shows the winning candidates and his associated party by color. Democrat’s candidates are shown in purple and Republicans are shown in pink. Remark that there was only one independent elected candidate shown in green.
A county-level choropleth map
The 2018 Senate race in Florida was extremely contentious, and was not resolved on election night. The race was too close to call, and the recount process was as controversial as the race, with accusations of poorly designed ballots reminiscent of the infamous butterfly ballot in the 2000 presidential election, and a slew of legal challenges.