Post-Election Campaign Narrative

1. Introduction

The district I chose to focus on was my home district in Nevada – Congressional District 3. The results of the midterms in Nevada proved that it still continues to be a swing state. While Congresswoman Susie Lee has guarded her seat for 3 consecutive cycles at this point (including the 2022 midterm elections), this district is known to be notoriously tight, and I was interested in observing a diverse and competitive district. In my final prediction, I ultimately decided upon NV-03 because it had the qualities I was looking for, namely that it was in a swing state but often mistaken as Democratic-leaning due to its blueward tilt. Brookings Institute Senior Fellow David Damore’s book “Blue metros, Red States: The Shifting Urban-Rural Divide in America’s Swing States” reported on the phenomenon of mixed partisan outcomes, found throughout races at both the state and local legislature level. The 2022 midterms supported the growing urban-rural divide, and both statewide and regional vote shares contributed to marginal wins for 2 candidates at the top of the ticket: Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D) and Governor Joe Lombardo (R). Battleground Nevada is also known for its stable partisan lean between Republicans and Democrats, which have lessened in extremity but still maintained the trend of being nearly perfectly purple. And even though through a Blue state electorate, the redistricting process was controlled by a Democratic majority, which resulted in NV-03 gaining a slight Republican edge. I kept a close eye on this race from far away because working in the previous cycle against Dan Rodimer as the AAPI Outreach and Field Organizer kept me interested in how Susie Lee could capitalize on DVC, especially with outreach to the growing AAPI population.

2. Brief General Overview of the District

District 3 has some notable features including its geography, demographics, the candidates, its electoral history, among others. While one may argue that NV-03 is no longer a toss-up because of redistricting, its past history as a nail-biter is enough to show the For context, FiveThirtyEight found through their new map ahead of the 2022 midterms, there are 1 Democratic-leaning seat, 1 Republican-leaning seat, and 2 highly competitive seats. While this fact did not change from the previous map, the partisan lean towards each side was much less extreme than in earlier years. To evaluate the competitiveness and fairness of the elections, we can look at the median seat, efficiency gap, and competitiveness. The median seat, which is the difference between the partisan lean of the state’s median district and the state as a whole, changed most drastically from Republicans leading with 0.2 percentage points (R + 0.2) to Dems + 5.5 points, which confirms the slight lean towards Democrats. Both the efficiency gap and competitiveness had little to no differences. FiveThirtyEight also found that NV-03 was the most competitive district in the state with a partisan lean of Dem + 2. The Cook PVI had previously in 2018 rated the district with a R+2 score, and the 2022 CPVI was D+1, meaning that in the previous 2 presidential elections, NV-03 was only 1% more Democratic than the national average.

As a result of the 2000 districting process, NV-03 covered some parts of Las Vegas, but mainly focuses on the south of Vegas, including Henderson, Boulder City, and much of unincorporated Clark County. After the 2020 redistricting cycle, however, much of Boulder City was cut out of District 3, and instead expanded to include the west side of Summerlin. Investigating the district’s electoral history, the pattern of competitive races are clear in previous cycles. Between 2002-2022, 6 Republicans held office, compared to 5 Democrats. It is important to note two key trends here: 1. Election results have not been distributed equally, meaning that more recent elections have leaned in favor of Democrats (although the margin has become slimmer and slimmer with Representative Lee’s races.) 2. Popularity of Incumbents is a huge trend that can be observed across different parties, especially when looking at Republican Jon C. Porter’s reign from 2002-2006, Republican Joe Heck from 2010-2014, and Democrat Susie Lee from 2018-present.

Data USA reports that the racial makeup of the district is fairly diverse with White (Non-Hispanic) voters making up 54% of the population, Asian (Non-Hispanic) 14%, Black/African American (Non-Hispanic) 7.68%, White (Hispanic) 9.62%, Multiracial (Non-Hispanic) 4.96%, Multiracial (Hispanic) 2.55%, Other (Hispanic) 4.87%, among others. What is most notable in demographics, however, is that the foreign-born population has a high share of 18.5%. Other demographic characteristics include employment, household income, poverty rate, property value, and education level. With a high employment growth rate and a high standard of living, most jobs are distributed to Accomodation and Food Services, Retail Trade, and Health Care & Social Assistance. When discussing the standard of living, it is important to note that the 2020 median property value has improved to $338,000. The median household income has been experiencing a steady growth as well, with the district experiencing 2.54% growth in a year to $75,965. Currently, the poverty rate is at 8.66%, which is substantially lower than the national average. In comparison to the national average, however, the rate of educational attainment was lower, with most adults aged 25 and older only having a regular high school diploma (20.4%) or finishing only some college (20.83%). Even considering this general pattern showing a slow shift towards Democrats and reasons to be satisfied with the rising standard of living under Representative Lee’s leadership, NV-03 was included in the 2 competitive Nevada races to watch.

3. Residual of Forecast vs Actual Results

The prediction for the most competitive district in Nevada (NV-03) was made using the proposed model above (which I used in my national model as well). The demographic characteristics of the district and U.S. macroeconomic conditions with the expert ratings for the election were used to estimate the popular vote share of the Democratic candidate. What resulted was a predicted vote share of 51.40% for Incumbent Democrat Susie Lee, whereas the matching share for the Republican candidate April Becker was 48.6%. Looking closely at the 95% predictive interval, the lower bound of the popular vote share for Lee was 43.77% and the upper bound 59.03%.

To check the prediction model’s accuracy, we can check the residuals (gap between the prediction and the actual election results from the 2022 midterm elections). The model works better with more accurate predictions for a specific congressional district (i.e. Nevada’s 3rd district) than the U.S. popular vote. The prediction model underestimated the popular vote share for the Democratic candidate (51.98%), Susie Lee, by only 0.58%. My personal forecast for NV-03 was actually extremely close and gave me confidence in using my model for other competitive district-level races. I think the fact that it worked so well, however, can be attributed to the pattern of similar races held previously that were equally, if not more, tight. Additionally, I would like to claim that the increasing diversity of the district in terms of age, race, and gender played a role in sending Representative Lee back to D.C., but this speculation may be confounded by other factors such as the redistricting process.

Other (more professional) expert opinions and predictions specifically for District 3 were more informed by relevant factors, but less accurate (if there was even a specific prediction made at all). Politico’s forecast claimed that NV-03 remained a toss up, considering a couple different factors. They considered previous elections, especially the fact that President Biden won it by only 7 points, and Lee had a smaller margin of victory. The race was broken down into 4 categories of incumbency (favored Dems), fundraising (favored Dems), candidate quality (toss-up), and long-term trends of political realignment (toss-up). Five Thirty Eight’s forecast found that Lee was slightly favored to win Nevada’s 3rd District, with a simulation (run 40,000 times) that found that out of a sample of 100 outcomes, April Becker won only 38 times while Susie Lee won only 62 times. But the top polls that influenced NV-03’s district (namely from Emerson College, RMG Research, Tarrance Group) predicted in favor of Becker’s win, with an average of about 1.75 points for Becker. The Nevada Independent, the most reputable state news source predicting the midterms, considered a couple factors, such as Lee’s prolific fundraising, reapportionment which tilted the district in favor of Republicans, and issues of candidate quality (mentioned in the next section). Based on these factors, the prediction estimated 51% of the votes to Becker and only 49% to Lee.

The graph below visualizes the accuracy of my model by showing the relationship between predicted and actual results as well as district-specific polls (generic ballot) leading up to November 7th. I started with about 4 months before the election but there was a lack of polls for NV-03 that skipped the period between July and November. Still, it can be observed that there was a fairly bleak outlook for Lee’s chances at winning the election a third time, until about a week before the election where about 47.4% of potential voters were in her favor.

4. Summary of Campaign in District and How Candidates Contribute to Deviations from Forecasted Outcomes

Considered one of the most competitive congressional elections in the 2022 midterm cycle, the election itself was challenging and characterized by a nasty fight between the two candidates. In order to protect her vulnerable seat, Lee raised a record amount of money, according to NPR, of more than $5 million, most of which was dedicated to fighting the air war. This record was not only limited to the amount raised, as the race attracted funds from outside groups, becoming one of the most expensive House races in the country.

On the side of the ground campaign, a couple issues concerning candidate quality haunted Lee and Becker. In the air war, and as a result, on the ground campaign, Lee was forced to reckon with harsh ads of questionable stock trades and personally profiting off of legislation that ended up driving up her negatives. On the ground, Becker was running a solid and credible campaign, fairly tame compared to the previous election cycle with challenger Dan Rodimer spewing conspiracy theories. Becker had a previous failed state Senate bid and denied election results, but was able to pull it together for NV-03’s race.

Looking retroactively at the losses of 2 Democrat and 2 Republican female candidates, it is important to note that the 2022 midterms were the first time since 1978 that Nevada failed to elect a woman to at least 1 executive branch office. This outcome is key to understanding NV-03’s race, as it aligns with the salience of abortion during the midterms, growing gender divide, and higher female voter turnout. An example of this can be found in NV-03: following the Dobbs Supreme Court ruling, Lee spent the majority of her campaign attacking April Becker’s stance on abortion, framing Becker’s platform as anti-choice extremism. On the other hand, Becker continuously brought up the possibility that Lee could financially benefit when supporting her own legislation and for backing President Biden’s economy. Because of the tight nature of the race, President Obama was brought in during a campaign rally, where he slammed Republicans for giving tax breaks to the wealthy. Candidate quality is crucial when thinking about how tight a race may be, and it is even more important of a factor with emotional and unpredictable voters. National outlets such as The Washington Post, Politico, and New York Times, as well as other local news sources like the Nevada Independent covered the race.

5. How Campaigns and Candidates Contribute to Deviations from the Forecasted Outcome

Based on existing literature, there is supportive evidence for the widely held belief that there are many unstable forces in an election that can potentially undermine election forecasts. Neither state nor national predictions are reliable or consistent all the time as the “knowns” of making a reliable election forecast come with the baggage of many “unknowns”, especially due to forecast calibration and communication changes. The biggest contributors to this deviation are campaigns, candidates, voters, and the media. When conflated by campaigns and candidates, voters often become emotional and unpredictable. And the media also contributes to this emotional swing by inflating key turning points in the campaign, creating an environment where it is difficult to be certain about one’s predictions.

As we had discussed in class, the messaging strategy of different campaigns of clarifying and intent campaigns plays a heavy hand in influencing the forecasted outcome. Lynn Vavreck posits that bad economic conditions, the right strategy for a challenger who is not in the same party as the President is a clarifying campaign where they frame the top issue to be the failing economy. In response, or in a premeditated response of this behavior, the party associated with the bad economy (often attributed to the incumbent President) should run an insurgent campaign where they highlight issues favorable to their party’s performance in office. This may explain why Becker attacked Lee’s stance on the economy and some of her failures in office, with the context of nationally growing inflation, while Lee responded in a way where she highlighted her bipartisanship in office.

Additionally, fundraising also plays a role. Gregory Huber and Kevin Arceneaux find in their article Identifying the Persuasive Effects of Presidential Advertising that campaign advertisements, there is little evidence to suggest that advertisements (at least in presidential elections) mobilize voters to turn out or teach them much useful information. However, there is strong evidence to suggest that voters are persuaded by them and some individuals are more prone to be influenced by this persuasion than others. In the context of NV-03, there was a huge disparity in funding as Lee’s record funding was unparalleled by Becker. With most of Lee’s funding geared towards the air war, we can guess that her campaign media strategy positively influenced the previously forecasted outcome, tilting the results in her favor.