By Paul A. Djupe, Data for Political Research
It’s a big night with a lot at stake. Some observers, like G. Elliot Morris, are calling 2026 a likely Blue wave and perhaps a Blue tsunami. It’s not just the polls, which have consistently favored Democrats, but other pieces of evidence too including early voting and very low approval of President Trump. Even if the polls have been off, it would take a bigger miss than ever experienced to threaten Democrats’ chances to at least take the House, though the Senate is another question.
OK, to the data! These data come from our recent survey of 542 students, wrapped up October 23. It is no surprise that the student body leans Democratic, but this is telling us that some Republicans are voting blue this round too – 77 percent say they would choose the Democratic candidate for congress compared to only 9 percent for the Republican. Thirteen percent of campus is Republican.
There’s been quite a lot of news about the growing (political) gender gap in the US – do we see any evidence of that at Denison? We do – 16 percentage points more women (84%) say they’ll pick the D than men (68%), with the caveat that the vast majority of Denison men are voting blue in 2026. Notably, more men are not voting and would choose some other candidate. I get the sense that some men (perhaps conservative ones) are just not that jazzed about this election. This may be the first time we can break out voter stats for those who id as transgender or non-binary (I had to combine some categories to have enough people to analyze, and I know that some are id’ing as men or women). They look like women in terms of their candidate support, though none are on the sidelines of this election contest.
One more before I just refresh various websites all night watching the returns come in. The figure below shows candidate support by partisanship. Partisans are overwhelmingly picking their party’s candidate, BUT look at Republicans! There’s some defection this year – a few are expected, but ~10 percent? No. And very sizable numbers are just sitting on their hands this election cycle. That’s a pretty clear protest against the state of the party and its standard bearer (Trump).
OK, one more – we asked about likelihood of voting because I am a political scientist after all – they’d throw me out if I didn’t! The following figure tells us the same thing as above – Republicans are NOT remotely as excited about voting as Democrats are in this round.
Ohio hasn’t had a tight election in awhile, but we should be careful what we wish for given the onslaught of ads and text messages. Of course, that is what is necessary to get people to the polls. If I have to send 4 reminders to take the survey, think about how many reminders are necessary to ensure people remember to vote! But it will be nice when today is over.
Paul A. Djupe is a local cyclist who runs the Data for Political Research minor. He started onetwentyseven.blog a decade ago in a bid to subsidize collective action and spread accurate knowledge about campus and what goes on there. He also writes about religion and politics in the US.
