What is “Drop-off?
Drop-off is not a formal term, as far as we know. It refers to the difference between the votes for the President and a key down-ballot race. In North Carolina we chose the Attorney General's race.
Previously we calculated the drop-off in raw number of votes for each county in North Carolina, by subtracting the number of votes for the Republican Attorney General from the number of votes for the Republican presidential candidate. (Republican drop-off)
To calculate Democratic drop-off, we followed the same procedure on the Democratic side. We subtracted the number of votes for the Democratic Attorney General from the number of votes for the Democratic presidential candidate.
We then expressed the drop-off as a percentage by dividing the raw number of Republican or Democratic drop-off votes by the total number of Republican or Democratic presidential votes.
The calculations and source data for these graphs are here.
The Democratic drop-off in North Carolina is negative in every county. Because according to the official election results, in every county in North Carolina, Kamala Harris got fewer votes than the Democratic Attorney General candidate.
Here we are illustrating one state, North Carolina, by showing you a barcode for the drop-off in each county. The red barcodes are for the Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump. The blue barcodes are for the Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris.
In the format above, with a bar chart for each county - it becomes very clear how unusual—how absurd—the pattern is. It is unusual to have every county voting in an identical pattern, and when that universal pattern suggests that in every county in North Carolina more voters voted for the Democratic attorney general candidate than for the Democratic presidential candidate, it is absurd. Yet we see this pattern, of more votes for Democratic down-ballot races than for the Democratic presidential race—as the Republican presidential candidate Trump floats far above Republican down-ballot candidates—we see this pattern replicated in state after state in the 2024 presidential election. The exact same pattern exists in Arizona, Montana, and Ohio to name a few. The pattern is close to this in Nevada, New York, North Dakota, and Connecticut.
We were inspired to display the data this way by the Election Truth Alliance, who showed our data in this format. We find it to be a useful lens, and so our data team created this chart. We will be bringing you more of this presentation in different states, as well as a statistical analysis of the drop-off rates in different states that we are working on. Plus so much more coming. Please stay tuned.
By the way, we have not verified the other charts and graphs from the Election Truth Alliance.
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Below is our original presentation of the North Carolina drop-off by number of votes and by percentages.
Drop-Off analysis - 2024 ELECTION
There is an overview that shows the differences in drop-off between the six swing and eleven non-swing states that were included in the data set. There is also a full data set spreadsheet for the multi-state comparison. You can read more about the analysis on our original Substack post.
Our data is accurate, based on the available election data at the time of the analysis. How do we know our data is correct?
- We use a reliable source. Our data is from uselectionatlas.org, which was recommended as a reliable source of clean election data by one of our top technical advisors. For the North Carolina Attorney General race we took our data from the North Carolina State Board of Elections website.
- Multiple team members checked each data extraction.
- The analysis was performed independently by two experienced data scientists. They did not share results until each one had completed the analysis. Their results were identical, giving us confidence that the analysis is accurate. We are extremely grateful to them, and the entire SMART Elections Data Team for the enormous amount of time, skill and dedication that has been devoted to this effort.
- If you think there is a mistake in the data, please alert us at SMARTelectionsACT@gmail.com. Please put DATA UPDATE in the subject line.
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