Election data from 2016 suggests Republicans might have a reason to worry about securing another term if they rebuff President Donald Trump, FiveThirtyEight reports.
The FiveThirtyEight website, which uses statistical analysis to tell stories, looked at five of the most competitive Senate races to conclude that abandoning Trump mid-campaign in 2016 "probably cost Republicans at least one Senate seat."
The races were of: Sens. Mark Kirk of Illinois, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. Kirk and Ayotte pulled support for Trump for different reasons — Ayotte because of the Hollywood Access tape and Kirk because of Trump's comments on Judge Gonzalo Curiel — while Johnson and Burr never retracted endorsements. Toomey didn't take a position on the Republican candidate until the day of the election.
"In each state, I compared the presidential and Senate results in two sets of counties (or towns, in the case of New Hampshire): One was "Trump Zones," which were defined as the places where Trump won a higher share of the two-party vote than Mitt Romney did in 2012, and the other was "Non-Trump Zones," which were places where he won a lower share than Romney," writes David Wasserman.
Ayotte and Kirk lost while Burr and Johnson won by, in part, securing nearly all of Trump's voters in Trump Zones like North Carolina's Sandhills and Wisconsin's Iron Range, reports FiveThirtyEight.
Toomey, meanwhile, won by two points.
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