Analysis
Reading Tuesday's county counts against a tied race
Tie pace: the margin each large county would post in a tied 2026 race, and how far large counties strayed from their states between 2018 and 2022.
Kent County, Michigan, which includes Grand Rapids, gave Gretchen Whitmer a 10.2-point margin in the 2022 governor’s race, within a tenth of a point of her statewide margin. If every Michigan county moves by the same number of points between that race and Tuesday’s Senate race, a Kent County result near an even split would mean a tied statewide race. Between 2018 and 2022, however, Kent swung 5.5 points further toward the Democrat than Michigan did. If it does that again, a tied Michigan race would show Kent at about 5.5 points for the Democrat.
Both numbers can be computed for every county in the 2026 battlegrounds. The first is the county’s tie pace: its 2022 margin minus the state’s 2022 margin, the margin the county would post in a tied race if every county moved alike. The second adds the county’s own gap from its state’s swing between the 2018 and 2022 midterms. The table below gives both for the four counties that cast the most votes in each of the 12 Senate battlegrounds analyzed in this series and in Pennsylvania’s governor’s race. The full sheet, every county in all 13 races, is data/baselines/tiepace_2026.csv.
Large counties and the gap
Of the 48 counties in the table with a 2018-to-2022 comparison, 39 swung further toward the Democrat than their state did, by 4.6 points on average, and the other nine swung less, by 2.1. Across all 48 the average gap was 3.3 points toward the Democrat. Hennepin County, Minnesota, ran 8.9 points ahead of its state’s swing and Johnson County, Iowa, 10.5. The first piece in this series found the same tendency across all counties, larger ones swinging further toward the Democrat in 13 of 14 comparisons. If 2026 follows it, a large county that reports at its tie pace would point to a statewide result better for the Republican than a tie, by roughly the county’s own gap, which averaged 3.3 points in this table. The gap is drawn from one cycle and from each state’s governor’s race (Ohio’s Senate race for Ohio), so it describes 2018 to 2022 and is not a forecast range.
Governor’s races as benchmarks
In Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska and Texas, the 2022 benchmark is the governor’s race, because none of the five held a Senate race that year. Whitmer, Tim Walz and Janet Mills ran as incumbents in 2022, and the Democrats running against Greg Abbott and Jim Pillen lost by 10.9 and 23.4 points. Seven of the states here held both a Senate and a governor’s race on the 2022 ballot. In six of them, each county’s gap between its Senate margin and its governor’s margin differed from the statewide gap by a vote-weighted root-mean-square of 1.8 to 3.9 points. In Kansas, where Laura Kelly won the governorship by 2.2 points and Jerry Moran won his Senate seat by 23.0, it was 7.3. Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska and Texas held no Senate race in 2022, so the same measure cannot be taken for them; in the seven states where it can, a county’s Senate and governor’s margins on one ballot strayed by those amounts.
In Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and South Carolina, the benchmark is the 2022 Senate race. For Georgia it is the November general, in which Raphael Warnock led Herschel Walker by 1.0 point, not the December runoff. North Carolina held no statewide race in 2018, so its counties have no gap.
Partial counts
Tie pace describes a county’s final count. A partial count can sit well away from where the county will finish if the ballots counted first lean differently from the rest, so the comparison with tie pace applies to a county’s complete count.
Tie pace for the largest counties
| Race (2022 benchmark) | County | Share of 2022 vote | 2022 margin | Tie pace | 2018-22 gap | Tie pace if gap repeats |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Georgia Senate (Senate general 2022, state +1.0) | Fulton | 10.6% | +49.0 | +48.0 | -1.2 | +46.8 |
| Cobb | 7.9% | +16.3 | +15.3 | +1.1 | +16.4 | |
| Gwinnett | 7.6% | +20.4 | +19.4 | +2.2 | +21.6 | |
| Dekalb | 7.6% | +70.2 | +69.2 | +1.1 | +70.4 | |
| Iowa Senate (Senate 2022, state -12.2) | Polk | 15.7% | +12.7 | +24.8 | +5.2 | +30.1 |
| Linn | 7.7% | +9.0 | +21.2 | +6.7 | +27.9 | |
| Johnson | 5.2% | +42.6 | +54.8 | +10.5 | +65.3 | |
| Scott | 5.2% | -3.6 | +8.6 | +1.2 | +9.8 | |
| Kansas Senate (Senate 2022, state -23.0) | Johnson | 26.1% | +1.3 | +24.3 | +6.3 | +30.6 |
| Sedgwick | 15.3% | -20.8 | +2.2 | -0.1 | +2.1 | |
| Shawnee | 6.5% | -11.4 | +11.6 | +0.7 | +12.3 | |
| Douglas | 4.7% | +35.9 | +58.8 | +2.4 | +61.2 | |
| Maine Senate (governor 2022, state +13.1) | Cumberland | 24.0% | +40.2 | +27.1 | +8.1 | +35.2 |
| York | 15.5% | +18.3 | +5.2 | +6.0 | +11.2 | |
| Penobscot | 10.2% | -5.3 | -18.4 | -6.9 | -25.3 | |
| Kennebec | 8.9% | +4.1 | -9.0 | -3.4 | -12.3 | |
| Michigan Senate (governor 2022, state +10.2) | Oakland | 14.2% | +23.1 | +12.9 | +5.5 | +18.4 |
| Wayne | 13.7% | +42.7 | +32.5 | -0.9 | +31.6 | |
| Macomb | 8.7% | +5.2 | -5.0 | +1.1 | -3.9 | |
| Kent | 6.8% | +10.2 | +0.1 | +5.5 | +5.5 | |
| Minnesota Senate (governor 2022, state +7.7) | Hennepin | 22.9% | +43.5 | +35.9 | +8.9 | +44.8 |
| Ramsey | 8.7% | +46.4 | +38.7 | +6.3 | +45.0 | |
| Dakota | 8.0% | +14.3 | +6.7 | +6.4 | +13.1 | |
| Anoka | 6.2% | -1.3 | -9.0 | +2.2 | -6.7 | |
| Nebraska Senate (governor 2022, state -23.4) | Douglas | 28.6% | +5.0 | +28.4 | +4.5 | +32.9 |
| Lancaster | 17.1% | +4.1 | +27.5 | -2.0 | +25.6 | |
| Sarpy | 9.7% | -15.2 | +8.3 | +8.5 | +16.7 | |
| Buffalo | 2.4% | -45.8 | -22.4 | -3.6 | -26.0 | |
| New Hampshire Senate (Senate 2022, state +9.1) | Hillsborough | 27.8% | +8.7 | -0.4 | +0.8 | +0.4 |
| Rockingham | 24.9% | +3.1 | -6.0 | +1.7 | -4.2 | |
| Merrimack | 11.4% | +13.3 | +4.2 | +2.0 | +6.2 | |
| Strafford | 9.1% | +19.5 | +10.4 | +2.3 | +12.8 | |
| Ohio Senate (Senate 2022, state -6.1) | Franklin | 10.3% | +32.5 | +38.6 | +8.0 | +46.7 |
| Cuyahoga | 9.9% | +35.6 | +41.8 | +3.6 | +45.3 | |
| Hamilton | 7.3% | +15.4 | +21.6 | +9.6 | +31.2 | |
| Summit | 4.8% | +13.2 | +19.3 | +4.3 | +23.7 | |
| South Carolina Senate (Senate 2022, state -25.9) | Greenville | 10.5% | -33.2 | -7.3 | +2.2 | -5.1 |
| Charleston | 9.0% | -4.9 | +20.9 | +6.8 | +27.8 | |
| Horry | 7.8% | -45.6 | -19.7 | -0.1 | -19.8 | |
| Richland | 7.4% | +25.5 | +51.3 | +2.8 | +54.1 | |
| Texas Senate (governor 2022, state -10.9) | Harris | 13.6% | +9.6 | +20.4 | +1.4 | +21.9 |
| Dallas | 7.7% | +26.8 | +37.7 | +4.8 | +42.6 | |
| Tarrant | 7.3% | -4.1 | +6.8 | +4.1 | +10.9 | |
| Bexar | 6.7% | +16.4 | +27.3 | +7.7 | +35.1 | |
| North Carolina Senate (Senate 2022, state -3.2) | Wake | 12.0% | +26.6 | +29.8 | ||
| Mecklenburg | 9.5% | +32.5 | +35.7 | |||
| Guilford | 5.0% | +18.2 | +21.5 | |||
| Forsyth | 3.6% | +11.3 | +14.5 | |||
| Pennsylvania governor (governor 2022, state +14.8) | Allegheny | 10.7% | +39.0 | +24.2 | +5.1 | +29.4 |
| Philadelphia | 9.3% | +72.6 | +57.8 | -0.8 | +57.0 | |
| Montgomery | 7.7% | +39.8 | +25.0 | +6.4 | +31.5 | |
| Bucks | 5.9% | +19.9 | +5.1 | +3.7 | +8.8 |
Margins are the Democrat’s share minus the Republican’s, in points of all votes cast. Tie pace is the county’s 2022 margin minus the statewide 2022 margin shown in the first column. The 2018-22 gap is the county’s swing minus its state’s swing between the two midterms in the same office.
Three counties in the table sit near an even split at tie pace: Kent in Michigan at 0.1, Hillsborough in New Hampshire at -0.4 and Sedgwick in Kansas at 2.2. Sedgwick, which includes Wichita, voted for Moran by 20.8 points in 2022, while he won the state by 23.0, and between 2018 and 2022 it moved with its state to within a tenth of a point. A Sedgwick count close to even on Tuesday would, on 2022’s arithmetic, describe a tied Kansas Senate race.
Notes and sources
File names in this section refer to the project’s working data files, which are not yet public. The data and code are available from the author on request.
Results: MIT Election Data and Science Lab, Precinct-Level Returns 2018 by Individual State (doi:10.7910/DVN/NVQYMG) and Precinct-Level Returns 2022 by Individual State (doi:10.7910/DVN/UYQIEP), CC0, aggregated to counties by pipeline/clean.py. Tie pace, the 2018-22 gap and the Senate-versus-governor comparison are the author’s analysis, computed by pipeline/tiepace.py. An independent review of draft 1 is in docs/REVIEW-piece3.md.
| Passage | Figures | File |
|---|---|---|
| Kent County lede | 2022 governor margin 10.24, state 10.19, tie pace +0.05; 2018-22 gap +5.47; tie pace if gap repeats +5.52 | data/baselines/tiepace_2026.csv (MI, SEN) |
| Large counties and the gap | 48 of the 52 table counties have a gap (North Carolina’s four do not); 39 positive, averaging +4.57; nine negative, averaging -2.09; mean of all 48 +3.32; Hennepin +8.91; Johnson, Iowa +10.51 | tiepace_2026.csv |
| Earlier finding | 13 of 14 comparisons with a positive size-swing correlation | piece 1; cycle_change.csv |
| Senate against governor, 2022 | vote-weighted RMS of county (Senate minus governor) gap around the state gap: NH 1.81, IA 1.89, PA 2.38, GA 2.43, SC 3.78, OH 3.88, KS 7.34; Kansas governor +2.21, Senate -22.96 | data/baselines/senate_vs_governor_2022.csv; data/clean/statewide_results.csv |
| Incumbents and 2022 margins | Texas governor -10.88, Nebraska governor -23.45; Georgia Senate general +0.95 (runoff +2.80) | statewide_results.csv |
| Close-to-even counties | Kent +0.05; Hillsborough 8.65 against 9.06, -0.41; Sedgwick -20.79 against -22.96, +2.17, gap -0.05 | tiepace_2026.csv |
| Table | generated, not typed | data/baselines/tiepace_2026_top.md from pipeline/tiepace.py |
Alaska is excluded because its returns here are by state house district, which were renumbered in 2021. Maine’s 2018 Senate race (Angus King, an independent) and Alaska’s 2022 ranked-choice races are excluded from all margin comparisons; see data/MANIFEST.md.
Changelog
- Published.
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