Colorado’s Legislative Candidate Leaderboard
Summary
Between 2012 and 2018 the best Republican legislative candidates have been:
Kevin Priola
Ken Summers
Dave Kerber
Rick Enstrom
Clarice Navarro-Ratzlaff
The Numbers
Having broken out Colorado’s best Republican candidates statewide, it is now time to take a look at the legislature. Ranking legislative candidates is more complex than ranking statewide candidates owing to the differences between the districts.
In order to make a fair comparison between legislative campaigns you have to control for the differences in each districts registration makeup as well as the year the campaign was run.
We’re going to use three metrics of campaign success. The first two are old standards while the third will be new to some. However, longtime readers should be familiar with all of them by now.
Methodology
Top of Ticket (ToT) Relative – This is a measure of how much better or worse each candidate did than the top of the ticket in the year they ran. It’s simply the percentage of the vote received by the legislative candidate minus the percentage of the vote received by the top of the ticket in their district that year. Higher numbers are better.
Generic Relative – Similar to the last measure this is a measure of how much better or worse each candidate did than an unknown, generic, Republican. Typically the statewide regent race is used for this comparison because it covers every legislative district but doesn’t command a large enough budget to sway voters based on candidate. As such, votes in this race tend to be choices made purely on party. Once again, this is the percentage of the vote the legislative candidate received minus the percentage of the vote received by the generic candidate in each district. Higher numbers are better.
TLA Difference – This measure is slightly more complex. The prior two measures can yield different results based upon the candidates used to compare against. TLA is a measure wholly internal to each legislative race and represents each candidates performance among Unaffiliated voters only. Higher numbers are better.
Campaign Performance Rank (CPR) – This is the total measure of how each candidate stacks up across the three metric categories. Candidates are ranked first on their performance in each individual category and those ranks are then aggregated into a single overall ranking. Lower numbers are better.
Best Republican Candidates – Overall
Clicking on each table will open a larger, high-resolution version.
Table 1 shows the best (and worst) campaigns when every legislative race between 2012 and 2018 is measured against every other.
2014 was a great year for Republicans so it dominates the top ranks. However, despite the recent bloodbath a couple candidates from 2018 still made the cut into the top of the ranking.
Still, it’s a little unfair to make candidates running in a terrible year compete against those running in a great year. Let’s examine who led the pack for campaigns ran in the same year.
Best Republican Candidates – Same Year
Table 2 measures campaigns only against other races that took place in the same year. This is why there are several people in each rank.
There are big differences in the dynamics between Presidential and Midterm elections. We can also group these years together to see who performed best in each.
Best Republican Candidates – Like Years
Best Republican Candidates – Competitive Races
Each year only a handful of races are truly competitive. Or, even if they aren’t, end up attracting outside money and fierce competition. If we really want to see who our strongest Republican legislative candidates have been these are the races to compare.
Among the truly competitive races Kevin Priola’s 2016 campaign was the best performer. Following Priola is a whole string of 2012 races — Summers, Kerber, Enstrom, and Navarro-Ratzlaff.
The Whole Magillah
You’ll need to click Table 5 to open.
