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Post-Election Campaign Narrative
In this final blog post for Gov 1347, I analyze the 2022 Congressional race in Ohio’s 1st district. I chose this district because it was considered a toss-up area where Democrats could flip the seat post-redistricting. Throughout the semester, I tracked the race and ultimately built a forecasting modeled that predicted the Incumbent Steve Chabot (R) would win with 53% of the vote. In actuality, Greg Landsman (D) unseated Chabot and received 52.5% of the popular vote.
Ohio-01 Summary
Ohio’s first district encompasses the Cincinnati metro area and is situated in the Southwest corner of Ohio. However, the district’s exact boundaries have changed dramatically after Ohio drew a new congressional map in early 2022. As shown below, Ohio-01 now includes more of Cincinnati, rather than the Western suburbs. The western area is called Hamilton County while the upwards/right area is called Warren County.
Figure 1: ** Images taken from Ballotpedia
In the old OH-01, as shown to the left, Republican Steve Chabot represented the district from 1995-2009 and 2011-2022. Entering the 2022 election, he was the incumbent candidate and had won the 2020 election by a 7 point margin. OH-01 had similarly voted for the Republican presidential candidate in every election since 2000, excluding 2008. In 2020, Trump beat Biden by a 3 point margin. Upon accounting for the new 2022 map on the right, Daily Kos estimated that Biden would have won the district with 53% of the vote, or an 8 point margin. Similarly, the Cook Political Report adjusted its Partisan Voter Index for Ohio-01 from R+5 to D+2.
According to Ballotpedia, the district is still predominantly white, with the exact demographic split at: 66% White, 21% Black, 4.4% Asian, .4% other, and 4.3% Hispanic. There are just under 770 thousand residents, where the median household income is about $62.5k. Currently, the high school graduation rate is 91.5% and the college graduation rate is 36.3%. These figures are similar to the demographics from the 2020 district, although the proportion of minority groups have increased and the median income has decreased.
The turnout in 2022 was 280k votes, or about 75% of its 2020 levels, with turnout rates decreasing equally across the two counties of the congressional district.
A Tale of Two Counties
To examine the election closer, I look to the makeup of the two individual counties: Hamilton and Warren. In both years, Hamilton County accounted for 65% of total votes while Warren made up the remaining 35%. Hamilton County changed its representation within district, moving from the Western suburbs to the entire city of Cincinnati. This shifted the county about 17 points Democrat, as Chabot lost the county by a 17-point greater margin in 2022 relative to 2020. Since Warren’s boundaries in the district stayed about the same, it voted at about the same margin, +32, for Chabot. This finding indicates that Chabot would have had to have a higher turnout in Warren County in order to outweigh the redistricting.
Forecasts
For Ohio’s 1st-district, I forecasted that Incumbent Steve Chabot (R) would beat challenger Greg Landsman (D) with 53.2% of the popular vote. I emphasized the uncertainty of this point estimate, and overall race, by showing that the 95% confidence interval was about 10 percentage points in both directions. Hence, my prediction included the possibility that either candidate could win and predicted a close margin regardless.
My point estimate interval was off by 5.9 percentage points, as the Democrat Landsman received about the voteshare I expected for Incumbent Chabot and vise-versa. My individual regression prediction intervals were substantially large that I was not confident about Chabot winning by 6 percentage points; however, I did not expect Landsman to win by over 5 percentage points.
My forecast was a weighted average of three models: one that focused on fundamentals (economic indicators, incumbency), another that included expert ratings from Cook, and one that only relied on polling. Both latter measures, expert predictions and polls, predicted a close electoral race.
Cook’s Political Report called the Ohio-01 race a “toss up republican,” with a partisan voter index of D+2. Similarly, Ohio-01 was labeled a “toss up” by other prominent prognosticators, including Inside Elections and Sabato’s Crystal Ball. While The Economist predicted that Landsman (D) would win 61 percent of the time, FiveThirtyEight predicted that Chabot(R) would win 84% of the time and get 53% of the popular vote. The New York Times had a point estimate in between these two, with Chabot leading by about 2.5 points. Finally, Politico was closest to the actual outcome, calling the race “Leans Democrat.”
Overall, the forecasts from Politico, Inside Elections, and Sabato were very close to the outcome. On the other hand, FiveThirtyEight, the NYT, and I expected a different outcome, although we all understood our models to capture significant uncertainty.
While the polling for Ohio-01’s 2022 race was limited to only three reputable surveys, they ended up being very close to the actual outcome. The three polls were all from Impact Research, a polling firm that gets a B/C rating from FiveThirtyEight. In the first poll conducted in May, the respondents were tied with each candidate netting 47% support. The two polls in the fall, each showed Landsman up 49%-46%; however, this differential was within the margin of error of 4.4%.
Candidates and their Campaigns
Vavreck’s Framework
To better frame my candidate messaging section, I use Lynn Vavreck’s dichotomy of a “clarifying vs. insurgent campaign” style. Vavreck argues that in a bad economy, the challenging candidate (whose party is not that of the president) should launch an “clarifying campaign” that attacks the current state of the economy. On the other hand, the party associated with an incumbent president’s bad economy should run an “insurgent campaign” that showcases the issues where their party polls more favorably (Vavreck).
Greg Landsman
www.landsmanforcongress.com
Greg Landsman ran a moderate Democrat campaign, promoting issues like access to reproductive rights, education, and healthcare. In his about page on his campaign website, he emphasizes his devotion to Cincinnati’s City Council where he served Hamilton County through promoting ethics compliance, education access, and infrastructure. Hence, it is not surprising that he outperformed Chabot in his county, especially given his campaign’s focus in highlighting his achievements there.
Landsman’s campaign chose to be on the “insurgent” side, as Vavreck would claim, by choosing topics where his party’s opinion is more popular. I believe that the reproductive rights issue was especially important given that Ohio recently instituted a law that prohibits all abortions after six weeks. Landsman’s campaign released attack ads that highlighted Chabot supporting a 15-week abortion ban and supporting the January 6th Insurrection. As well, Landsman ran ads showcasing his accomplishments in preschooling and infrastructure. While Landsman did cover inflation in his issues page, his campaign ads were more centered on the work he’d done as City Councillor and Chabot’s anti-abortion stance.
Steve Chabot
stevechabot.com
In Steve Chabot’s about page, he expectedly highlighted his 16-term tenure of serving Ohio-01, touting fiscal conservatism, accomplishments in Congress, and impact in the foreign affairs space. However, his primary campaign was “clarifying” against the state of inflation and taxes under Biden’s economy. Most of his ads used the phrase “can’t afford”, speaking to how inflation has driven up costs for everyday Ohioans. Chabot’s campaign accused Landsman of raising taxes and working closely with Pelosi, therefore making the situation worse. Similarly, Chabot ran a “clarifying” campaign on safety, blaming the current crime rates on the Democratic party’s lenience towards crime. In his issues page, he did not mention reproductive rights, likely due to his unfavorable stance on the topic. Hence, he followed Vavreck’s recommendations closely. I think Chabot might have performed better had he discussed his contributions to the Cincinnati community instead of just focusing on his accomplishments in Washington.
Campaign Finance Note
One interesting note is that Landsman outraised and outspent Chabot’s campaign by about $500,000. This appears unlikely to have made the difference in this race, relative to redistricting, but could indicate that Republicans were overly confident in this district. Upon looking closer at Open Secrets, I see that 50% of Chabot’s Budget came from large individual contributions and 40% came from PAC contributions. On the other hand, Landsman’s fund split was: 22% small individual contributions, 63% Large individual contributions, and 15% PAC Contributions. It is noteworthy that Chabot relied significantly more on PAC contributions than Landsman.
Conclusion
Ohio-01 has been a fascinating race to watch over the semester, and I am grateful to have learned many lessons about forecasting through this example. In retrospect, I would have relied less on fundamentals given that the congressional map was different from prior elections. Moving forward, I predict that, on average, the median voter theory will hold in this district and the more moderate candidate will win.
On the campaign side, I think both candidates performed well at running insurgent campaigns and using their opposing candidates’ weaknesses to their own advantage. However, I would argue that Chabot did not highlight his local achievements enough. His campaign was very attack heavy on the Democrats, and the accomplishments he listed in his about page were all at a national scale. On the other hand, Landsman had a nice balance of pro and attack ads, showcasing his progress in Cincinnati preschooling while also criticizing Chabot’s track record on abortion rights. Hence, Landsman’s ability to balance both type of advertisements may have pushed him over the edge, and exceed forecasting. However, I believe that the main reason why forecasters (including myself) were too confident about Chabot winning was that we underestimated the demographic shift from redistricting.
Works Cited
Adam R. Brown. Voters Don’t Care Much About Incumbency. Journal of Experimental Political Science, 1(2):132–143, 2014.
Vavreck, Lynn. The Message Matters the Economy and Presidential Campaigns. Princeton University Press, 2009.
“Ohio’s 1st Congressional District.” Ballotpedia, https://ballotpedia.org/Ohio%27s_1st_Congressional_District.
“Ohio District 01 2022 Race.” OpenSecrets, https://www.opensecrets.org/races/summary?cycle=2022&id=OH01&spec=N.