District Comparison

Overall Results

Within the US, the power and impact of your vote varies depending on where you live. We calculate the Voting Impact Score for each address using the turnout, number of representatives, and historical closeness in federal elections.

Vote Slice is the “slice” of the elected representatives (senator, congresspeople, and presidential electors) per vote. Higher numbers mean more impact per vote. See the Appendix for more information.

Average Voting Impact Score × 107

NY District 10 (10004)

17.1

WY District at-large (82001)

46.7


Average Vote Slice × 106

NY District 10 (10004)

2.76

WY District at-large (82001)

7.19


Average Weighted Closeness × 102

NY District 10 (10004)

65.2

WY District at-large (82001)

65.8


House Results

The Voting Impact Score in a House election is calculated according to the election’s turnout and historical closeness. Higher numbers mean more voting impact and larger “slice” of the elected official per vote. Elections with a closeness score around 0 typically have only one candidate. CA-21 has the highest House impact score (55), while GA-5 has the lowest (7).

Voting Impact Score × 107

NY District 10 (10004)

20.3

WY District at-large (82001)

31.5


Vote Slice × 106

NY District 10 (10004)

4.25

WY District at-large (82001)

4.42


Closeness History


Senate Results

The Voting Impact Score in a Senate election is calculated according to the election’s turnout and historical closeness in the state. Vote Slice is proportional to the one senator up for election at a time divided by the number of voters. Higher numbers mean more voting power and larger “slice” of the elected official per vote. Wyoming has the highest Senate impact score (34), while California has the lowest (.72)

Voting Impact Score × 107

NY District 10 (10004)

1.0

WY District at-large (82001)

33.8


Vote Slice × 106

NY District 10 (10004)

0.15

WY District at-large (82001)

5.38


Closeness History


Presidential Results

The Voting Impact Score in a Presidential election is calculated according to the election’s turnout and historical closeness in the state. Vote Slice is proportional to the state’s number of electors in the electoral college. Higher numbers mean more voting impact and larger “slice” of the state’s electors per vote.

Small and swing states generally have higher impact scores, like Alaska (78) and Vermont (72), while scores are lower in larger non-swing states like Massachusetts (25).

Voting Impact Score × 107

NY District 10 (10004)

29.9

WY District at-large (82001)

74.7


Vote Slice × 106

NY District 10 (10004)

3.90

WY District at-large (82001)

11.78


Closeness History

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PowerVoting is a Politiwatch project led by Leyla Jacoby.

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Appendix

PowerVoting uses the closeness of elections and the constituency size (e.g. voters per representative, senator, or elector) at the federal level to find the relative “impact” of a vote for the addresses you look up. The Voting Impact Score is the percentage of Vote Slices that could remain unchanged for the results of an election to still flip. The higher this number, the less movement necessary to flip the election and the greater the impact of a vote.

Election closeness is calculated by subtracting the percentage victory margin between the first and second place candidates in an election from one. This closeness score is calculated for every historical election in the district since 1976, then displayed as a chart on the results page. The overall closeness score for the district is a weighted average of these individual election scores, with increasingly recent elections weighted according to the square of the number of years since 1975.

The Vote Slice is calculated by dividing the average units of power in an election (1 for house and senate elections, the number of electors in the state for presidential elections) over the turnout in the district (or, in the case of senate and presidential elections, the state) for the two most recent elections with nonzero votes. More simply, this metric quantifies the ‘slice’ of the representative or elector that an individual vote corresponds to.

The overall Voting Impact Score is the product of the overall closeness score and the two most recent Vote Slice scores for the district multiplied by ten million (to make the number more accessible and intuitive). A higher impact score for a district means generally closer elections and larger “slice” of an elected official per vote.

District mapping data is from Google and election data is from the MIT Election Lab. Some special elections may not be included.

The source code is open source and available on GitHub.