WAR: What is it good for?
Every Win The Middle candidate overperformed the fundamentals of their district
In every field, people look to those who have succeeded against the most challenging competition. And then those records are put into context. A home run hit at Yankee Stadium in 1968, before the mound was lowered, is different from clearing the fence through thin air when visiting the Colorado Rockies during the steroid-fueled 2001 season. Earning a 15% return on a stock portfolio sounds good, but must be adjusted for risk and market conditions before crowning the next Warren Buffett.
But in politics, politicians who win the easiest races often have the loudest megaphones after elections. This is in part because their job is so easy. Progressives in deep blue districts or MAGA icons in deep red districts can spend all year getting attention, while their colleagues in closely contested seats are focusing resources and relationships on winning swing voters.
To understand how to win, you need to look at candidates who ran the best relative to expectations - especially those who won tough races with the odds stacked against them.
Who are they?
This week, Split-Ticket released their “Wins Above Replacement” or WAR model, which estimates how much a candidate performed over the “fundamentals” of their district.
Who Are The Winners?
The chart below shows all of the races where the outcome was flipped because of candidate strength (or weakness). A few things stand out to us.
Blue Dogs top the list: endorsees Henry Cuellar, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Jared Golden and Adam Gray account for four of the top five House over performances. None of the Democrats on the list were progressives (one, Ruben Gallego, left the progressive caucus ahead of his Senate run).
Bob Casey went negative - from being a top performer in 2018 to running behind the fundamentals in 2024 (we dug into that here).
Progressives were negative: Looking at the full models (House and the Senate), Warren (R+10.8) and Sanders (R+3.9), ran behind the fundamentals worse than any other incumbent Democrats.1 In the House, Jayapal ran significantly behind the fundamentals of her district (R+9.1).
The top Democratic performers included Mary Peltola (D+9.1), Janelle Stelson (D+8.8), Kristen McDonald Rivet (D+8.6), George Latimer (D+7.6), Rebecca Cooke (D+7.3), Will Rollins (D+6.4), Adam Frisch (D+6.3), Whitney Fox (D+6.1), and John Avlon (D+2.5).
Escape Velocity
Every candidate on our “Win The Middle” slate overperformed their fundamentals, and our endorsees include two of the performances strong enough to flip the outcome.
Why?
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