Historical Vote-Getting & Previous Cycle Performance

Overview

This pillar evaluates a candidate's historical election performance against polling expectations. It identifies candidates who consistently overperform or underperform, providing a crucial layer of context that polls alone miss.

What It Does

The analysis aggregates a candidate's entire electoral history, comparing their final vote percentages to the final pre-election polling averages for each race. It differentiates between primary and general elections, competitive and safe seats, and first-time runs versus incumbent campaigns. This creates a career-level 'Performance Over Polling Expectation' score.

Why It Matters

Polls can have systematic biases and often fail to capture a candidate's ground game effectiveness or specific demographic appeal. This pillar quantifies a candidate's ability to get out the vote beyond what pollsters predict, offering a significant edge in forecasting close races.

How It Works

First, we compile all of a candidate's past election results from official sources. Next, we gather the final polling averages for each of those elections from reputable archives. We then calculate the delta between the actual vote share and the polling average, weighting recent and more competitive races more heavily to determine a predictive score.

Methodology

The core metric is the 'Performance Over Polling Expectation' (POPE) score, calculated as: POPE = (Actual_Vote_Share - Final_Polling_Average). An average POPE score is computed across the candidate's career, with a 0.7 decay factor for elections over 5 years old. Primary election POPE scores are weighted 1.5x higher than general election scores for primary market predictions.

Edge & Advantage

This provides a data-driven adjustment for polling averages, correcting for candidates whose support is consistently under or overestimated by traditional survey methods.

Key Indicators

• Performance vs. Polls Delta

  high

  The percentage points by which a candidate's actual vote share beat or missed their final polling average.

• Competitive Race History

  high

  The candidate's win/loss record and performance delta specifically in races decided by less than 10 points.

• Incumbency Advantage Factor

  medium

  Measures how much of a candidate's past success can be attributed to the inherent advantages of being an incumbent.

Data Sources

• Ballotpedia

  Provides comprehensive historical election results and candidate biographies.

• FiveThirtyEight Polling Archives

  A repository of historical polling data and pollster ratings for past election cycles.

• The Cook Political Report

  Offers historical race ratings and analysis, providing context on race competitiveness.

Example Questions This Pillar Answers

• → Will Candidate X win the New Hampshire Republican primary?
• → What will be Candidate Y's final vote share in the Iowa Democratic caucus?
• → Will Candidate Z outperform their final polling average by more than 2% in the South Carolina primary?

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