2024 GEN PRES ELECTION Multi-STATE DROP-OFF COMPARISON

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 the  next down-ballot race. For this study, we calculated the drop-off, for the 2024 presidential election, both in raw numbers and in percentages for each major party (Democratic and Republican) for 17 states.

There is an overview above 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. 

In the overview chart, the percentages are a more meaningful comparison because the large number of votes in the non-swing states makes the comparison by number of votes less relevant. The comparison by number of votes shows how staggeringly large the drop-off margins are though.

Each of the 17 states we analyzed has a bar chart below showing the drop-off rate by both number of votes and by percentage. Below each state's bar chart is a link to a spreadsheet where you can explore the drop-off analysis by county, as well as see the actual election results by county for that state. 

Feel free to explore the charts. We welcome you comments on our Substack, or via DM there. Please subscribe and join the conversation.

Drop-off by number of votes is calculated by subtracting the Senate votes from

the presidential votes for each political party. Drop-off by percentage is calculated by dividing the number of drop-off votes by the number of presidential votes for that political party (Democratic or Republican).

These percentages are vastly different on the Republican and Democratic side. The drop-off on the Republican side is very high - in some swing states it averages close to 10%. Meaning close to 10% of Republican Presidential voters did not vote for a Republican Senate candidate. In Ohio the Republican drop-off is over 10%. In Rockland County New York the Republican drop-off rate is 23%. 

The Democratic drop-off by contrast is low in most states we examined and actually in negative territory in more than half of this data set. In Arizona, North Carolina and Ohio, the Democratic drop-off is -5%, or lower. That means that according to these results 5% or more of democratic leaning voters, chose to vote for the Democratic Senate candidate, but decided not to vote for the Democratic candidate for president. In Arizona for example there is an almost 16% spread between the Republican and the Democratic drop-off. 

1. 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.
2. Multiple team members checked each data extraction.
3. 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.
4. 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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