National Party Balance of Power/Trends Reports

 

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Description

For the general election in presidential and midterm years, continuously updating reports provide the national balance of power/trend information for Governor, U.S. Senate and U.S. House. There is one report for each.

The individual national balance of power/trend reports show a party breakdown if the present trends in the vote count continue for races for Governors, U.S. Senate and U.S. House. The parties are Dem (for Democrat), Rep (for Republican) and Others for third-party and independent candidates.

 

 

  Note

 

Races where no votes have been reported do not figure in a trend table. Therefore, early in the election, the trend does not add up to the full number of seats or offices.

 

 

 

Data Elements

 

  Note

 

The unit for each is candidates in a party seat.

 

 

 

 

 

XML Element

Description

Office

Name of office (Governor, U.S. Senate or U.S. House).

OfficeTypeCode

Office type code (G, S or H).

Test

Indicates whether this is a TEST (Test=1) or LIVE election day report (Test=0).

title

Party abbreviation (Dem, GOP or Others).

Current

The total number of seats for the office for each party, before the current election.

Won

The number of seats for each party that have been declared winners by the AP in the current election.

Leading

The number of seats for each party that are currently leading but have not been declared winners by the AP in the current election.

Holdovers

The number of Governor or U.S. Senate seats for each party that are not up for election in the current election. (For example, only one-third of the Senate is up for election each year, so two-thirds of the senators are holdovers.)

  Note

 

All U.S. House seats are up for any given election, so Holdovers will be 0 for the U.S. House.

 

 

 

Winning Trend

Party breakdown if present trend continues (Won, Leading and Holdovers combined).

Insufficient Vote

The number of seats for each party where the race is ignored in trend calculations. Races with fewer than 5% of precincts reporting, with less than 5% of registered voters having voted so far, and with no declared winner are considered to have insufficient votes. Uncalled, uncontested races are included as part of the Insufficient Vote.

Net Change

Net change is broken down into two subcategories - Winners and Leaders.

Winners

The number of seats that each party has won or lost in races where a winner has been declared. Any races where a winner has not been declared are ignored in this calculation.

For example:

  • If two races have been called and both for Democrats, and the incumbents in both of these races are Republicans, then the net change winners would be +2 for DEMs and -2 for GOP.

  • If a third race is then called with a GOP winner and a GOP incumbent, the net change would remain +2 DEM and -2 GOP.

  • If a fourth race is called for a GOP winner where the incumbent is a DEM, then the net change winners would be +1 DEM and -1 GOP.

Leaders

The number of seats that each party would win or lose in races where the winner has not been declared. Races with insufficient votes are not included in Net Change Leaders. Net Change Winners and Net Change Leaders may be added together to get net change trends, assuming that the leaders will become winners.

Insufficient Vote section

Races with insufficient votes are broken down into categories based on the incumbent parties.

  • Dem Open, GOP Open and Oth Open: races with one non-running Dem, GOP or minor party incumbent.

  • Dem incumbent, GOP incumbent, Oth incumbent: races with one Dem, GOP or minor party incumbent who is running for re-election.

Total

The total number of races with insufficient votes.

Example

This XML example shows a U.S. House Balance of Power/Trend table report. The Governor and U.S. Senate Balance of Power/Trend tables have the same format. The main difference is the Governor and U.S. Senate tables will have non-zero values for “Holdovers.”

The following is the same example rendered in a readable table:

 

 

DEM

REP

OTHERS

Current

193

242

0

Won

198

227

5

Leading

2

3

0

Holdovers

0

0

0

 

----

----

----

Winning Trend

200

230

5

Insufficient Vote

0

0

0

Net Change:

 

 

 

Winners

+6

-10

+5

Leaders

+1

-2

+0

 

-----

----

----

 

+7

-12

+5

Insufficient Vote:

 

 

 

Dem Open:  0

GOP Open:  0

Oth Open:  0

Dem Incumbent:  0

GOP Incumbent:  0

Oth Incumbent:  0

 

 

 

Total: 0