Party ID

Voters in Virginia don’t register a Party, so one of the most important information to track on a voter is their partisanship. The main method for determining partisanship for us is to track primary participation and candidate ID’s and calculate and provide a “Likely” party ID.

So, if the voter has participated in several Dem primaries – we assign Democratic Points to that voter for each vote. If the voter voted in a 1 Republican Primary and 1 Democratic Primary, 50 R points and 50 D points are given to the voter. The Likely Party algorithm will add up all the Dem Points & Rep Points and determine that the voter is an Independent or Swing Voter. If the voter didn’t participate in primaries, but answered a candidate survey and responded that she strongly supported the Dem candidate, 25 Dem points might be assigned and she would come out as a “Lean Dem”. Over time when more and more data points are collected on an individual, the more accurate a picture we have of that voter.

Likely Party ID

SD STRONG DEM (Usually – a Dem Primary Voter)

LD LEAN DEM (Has - Dem Candidate IDs)

ND NO DATA (Little or no ID information)

U UNIDENTIFIED (No Id or primary vote ever captured on voter)

I INDEPENDENT (Swing) (Has as many Dem Points as Rep Points)

SR STRONG REPUBLICAN (Usually – A Rep Primary Voter)

LR LEAN REPUBLICAN (Has – Rep Candidate IDs)