Below is a histogram showing the Democratic share of two-party voter registration in all 173 Congressional, Assembly, and state Senate races. The large greenish distribution shows all the districts. The red distribution shows just the districts in which Republicans will face each other in a runoff, and the blue shows the districts where Democrats will face other Democrats.
The not-terribly-surprising result is that the same-party runoffs are concentrated in the more ideologically extreme districts. All the Democrat-on-Democrat contests will take place in districts where Democrats make up at least 64% of major party registrants. Conversely, with the exception of the CD31 contest in San Bernardino County, the Republican-on-Republican contests are happening in districts where Democrats represent 44% of major party registrants or less. The more moderate districts (yes, California has lots of those!) will feature both a Republican and a Democrat this November.
It is notable that only four eight of the 20 28 same-party contests will feature Republicans, and all of them are in the Assembly. I don't know if this means that the GOP was more effective in concentrating support around a party favorite, if they had fewer high quality candidates running, or if it was just a coincidence. But I hope to have more on this in the near future.
Update: Alert reader Eric McGhee noticed some missing cases that weren't mentioned in the Sacramento Bee article above, so I've updated the graph and post with the new information.
For comparison's sake, you might also include the eight unopposed Democrats as well as the four Democrats and one Republicans who are facing No Preference candidates in November.
ReplyDeleteIf the Republicans only vote Republican, and the Democrat on Democrat, how does one become President if only 2 parties vote?
ReplyDeleteregards,
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