A Narrow Path to 2020 Victory for McSally

An Analysis of Arizona’s US Senate Election

What Happened in 2018

In November 2018, Martha McSally (R) was defeated by Kyrsten Sinema (D) by a margin of 2.4% in the race for Arizona’s U.S. Senate seat. This made Kyrsten Sinema the first woman elected to Arizona’s U.S. Senate seat ever, and the first Democrat to win the seat in 28 years.

McSally’s defeat became the focal point of an election cycle where, aside from Gov. Doug Ducey, Arizona Republicans struggled in statewide races. Democrats managed to flip 3 of 8 State Executive positions, and 5 of 6 comparable races saw a decline in GOP vote margin between 2014 and 2018. When compared to the most recent midterm, the average State Executive election GOP margin declined 3%, from 6.3% to 3.3%.

Shortly after the 2018 election, Martha McSally was appointed to the Senate seat vacated by the passing of Sen. John McCain and subsequent resignation of Sen. Jon Kyl. The now appointed Sen. McSally, will get no downtime, as she will have to defend the seat in a special election set for November 2020 against former Navy fighter pilot and retired astronaut, Mark Kelly. The winner of this election will finish the last two years of McCain’s term.

With McSally and Kelly raising a combined $13.9 million in the first 6 months of 2019, Arizona’s 2020 Senate Election is already heating up- Before both campaigns go into full swing, I took a look back at the 2018 Senate Race.

The following analysis attempts to identify the groups of voters McSally underperformed with relative to successful statewide Republicans, and where she needs to make inroads to win in 2020- with a focus on Maricopa County.

Split Tickets Tell the Story

To see where exactly McSally underperformed, we are comparing her US Senate Race performance to Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s performance in his race for reelection. Brnovich can serve as a proxy for the default Republican performance due to his race having a comparable 2014 data point and the smallest amount of volatility between his 2014 and 2018 results.

Fig 1. 2018 AG Race highlighting precincts McSally lost+Brnovich Won in Maricopa County

Mark Brnovich won Maricopa County with a 4.4% margin and outperformed McSally by a massive 8.6% in the critical county. McSally lost 82 (20%) of the precincts that Brnovich won.

The Attorney General’s race was relatively low profile, so the 8.6% difference between Brnovich and McSally’s performance highlights that a significant amount of voters in certain precincts voted for Republicans in lower profile contests, but split their ticket and voted for Democrat, Kyrsten Sinema, in the Senate race.

Fig 2. 2018 AG Race highlighting precincts McSally lost+Brnovich Won in Maricopa County, street view

To take a closer look at the 82 precincts McSally lost and Brnovich won, I overlaid census data from the American Community Survey 5-year onto the precincts and merged demographic data with relevant election results.

The 82 precincts that McSally lost and Brnovich won differed in a few key ways from the precincts that McSally won, most notably, the average age of these precincts were 6 years (13%) younger. Other interesting demographic indicators were the precincts had 4% larger nonwhite populations, were 3% more college educated, and earned 3% less.

Fig 3. ACS 5-year Data overlaid on Precincts

Three Pivotal Groups

Fig 4. CNN Exit Polls from 2016 & 2018

According to CNN Exit Polls, the demographics that were highlighted as differentiating the precincts McSally underperformed in show deteriorated support when comparing voters that indicated they voted for Trump in 2016 and voters that indicated they voted for McSally in 2018.

Support for McSally compared to Trump declined among under 35, college educated white, and nonwhite voters at rates of -4%, -5%, and -1% respectively.

What is particularly concerning about these dips in support, is that 2018’s turnout was considerably more advantageous for GOP candidates like herself and may have softened the impacts of these declines. In fact, according to Catalist turnout models, of the aforementioned groups, only college educated voters are indicated as increasing in turnout share between 2016 to 2018.

Fig 5. Catalist Modeled Turnout (link to dataset and website below)

This indicates that McSally was unable to win in 2018 when the electorate looked largely like the electorate that elected Donald Trump in 2016. As explained above, the ACS demographic data and the exit polls both point to a decline in support in under 35, college educated white, and nonwhite voters as being the key reasons that McSally was unable to capitalize on Trump’s previous coalition.

Closer Look at Key Demographics

Under 35 Voters

A recent analysis of the Current Population Survey by the Brooking Institute showed that voters aged 18–29 had a turnout rate in 2018 that was 16% higher than 2014. This spike in turnout increased the groups share of the electorate by 4% in the same period. This trend was compounded by a 4% decrease in voters aged 45–64 share of the electorate.

Under 35 voters currently have a 32% approval rating of the President, and according to Catalist’s models, voters aged 18–29 in Arizona voted for Democrats by a margin of 34% in 2018, which was an increase from the estimated 25% margin in 2016.

You can see McSally’s performance correlated with median age of a precinct visualized in the graph above.

Trump was able to win Maricopa County by 2.9% while winning only 37% of voters aged under 35, but the landscape has shifted due to increased turnout and voting behavior that is trending to be substantially more liberal than it was in 2016. These factors make a McSally victory in 2020 unlikely if she cannot modestly outperform her 2018 performance among younger voters.

Nonwhite Voters

Arizona has the 3rd fastest growing nonwhite population in the US, with the largest portion of that being Hispanic. Increased Hispanic turnout helped drive a 4% increase in nonwhite voter share of the electorate when comparing 2014 and 2018. This decreased the white composition of the electorate from 79% in 2014 to 75% in 2018.

McSally’s poor 2018 performance with nonwhite voters, can be seen in the above graph.

Fig 7: CNN Exit Polls 2018

As mentioned above, Maricopa County precincts that split their tickets for AG Brnovich, Kyrsten Sinema, were 4% less white than precincts that McSally won. This signals an underperformance with non-white voters.

This underperformance becomes more clear when comparing her performance to Gov. Doug Ducey’s. Exit polls showed that Gov. Ducey won 40% of non-white voters in his bid for reelection, while McSally only won 31% of non-white voters.

Nonwhite voters appear to be a group that McSally has significant room to improve her margin with, and one that is necessary for her to at the very least, moderately improve her margin with. Like under 35 voters, nonwhite turnout in Arizona is expected to reach record levels in 2020. With exit polls showing that college educated white voters are trending to vote for Democrats at a higher rate than 2018, making inroads with nonwhite voters will likely be necessary for McSally to win in 2020.

Looking Forward

2018 Was Hard, 2020 Will Be Harder

Despite McSally’s 2018 underperformance, there is a clear, albeit, narrow path to a 2020 victory. That path involves the difficult task of building a slightly younger, more diverse, and better educated coalition of supporters. Adding a layer of difficulty to this task, she has to make these inroads while already being defined by 92% of likely 2020 voters, according to a recent OHPI poll.

The poll released by OHPI, shows that Mark Kelly is currently leading Martha McSally by 5%, a concerning slide from McSally’s 1% lead in May. However, polling behind early is not new to McSally, as shown in the Real Clear Politics polling averages during her 2018 campaign against Sinema.

Fig 8: Real Clear Politics Average Polls McSally VS Sinema 2018

The granular demographic trends and local polling look challenging, but even from a macro level the 2020 Senate Race looks more difficult than 2018. Morning Consult has found that Arizona’s net approval of President Trump has declined by 5% since November 2018, from -2% to -7%. With 2020 putting President Trump in the spotlight, Trump’s approval is likely to be a key predictor for GOP success up and down the ballot.

Source: Morning Consult

2020 Advantages

Despite all of the challenges mentioned above, this election will be easier for McSally in a few ways.

First, she has no legitimate primary challenger which will allow her to appeal to a broader voter pool early. One of the biggest criticisms of her 2018 campaign was that she messaged too far to the right in the primary, and was unable to pivot back. Having an open field allows McSally to make a more calculated first impression with thousands of voters that sat out 2018 but will vote in 2020.

Also, McSally’s opponent, Mark Kelly, is largely undefined by voters. 31% of voters polled by OHPI had no opinion or had never heard of Mark Kelly. This is expected for a first time candidate, but this exposes Mark Kelly to being defined by McSally rather than by his own campaign. If McSally’s campaign delivers valid criticisms of Mark Kelly early, she could tilt the race in her favor.

Thanks for reading.

The dataset I aggregated / created to build my fundamental analysis is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18c6Zx18niyGkA8xhWm1tuUurSDFj_fqLQUsTdZKqOt4/edit?usp=sharing

Catalist Dataset: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1i9bscS_BTQT2bafjVw1GPByiyVF3efPbvYeD6Ea8H20/edit?ts=5c3e0c64#gid=730263587