This project explores Pennsylvania's election data to find state reps who may be vulnerable to challenge. Click here for a live version.
There are obviously many measures of what constitutes a vulnerable elected official. This project assumes that a representative is vulnerable if the presidential candidate from the party opposite the state rep won the election in 2016 in the state rep's district. For example, a candidate from Senatorial District X would be vulnerable if that candidate is from party A and the presidential candidate from party B won the election in District X.
The map presents two ways of measuring how vulnerable a candidate is. A vulnerable candidate can be seen as more vulnerable if she only won her district by a small margin. Alternatively, a vunerable candidate can be seen as more vulnerable if the presdiential candidate from the opposite party won by a large margin. The following candidates would all be seen as vulnerable for various reasons:
| State Rep Party | Win Margin | Presidential Winner Party | Win Margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| R | 2% | D | 2% |
| R | 90% | D | 50% |
| D | 2% | R | 50% |
| D | 90% | R | 2% |
The application is written in R/Shiny.
The vote data comes from the Open Elections Project's PA specific data. The project uses both the 2016 data and the 2014 data (since only half of state senators are voted on every 2 years).
The shapefiles come from the official Pennsylvania redistricting website.