National Partisanship Dominates Some Local Races, Barely Explains Others

Why Partisanship in Local Elections Matters

This paper asks how much voters' national party alignments shape outcomes in U.S. state and local contests—especially the many down‑ballot races that are formally nonpartisan or involve ballot measures. Understanding whether local politics are nationalized affects how scholars interpret local policymaking, campaign strategies, and the health of local democracy.

What Conevska, Hirano, Kuriwaki, Lewis, Mutlu, and Snyder Did

The authors analyze individual cast vote records from the 2020 general election to link voters' national partisanship with their choices across thousands of local contests. Their scope is unusually large: over 50 million voters and more than 5,700 contested down‑ballot contests, including partisan offices, nonpartisan offices, and local ballot measures.

Data and Measurement

• The analysis uses ballot‑level data to measure how much of the within‑contest variation in votes can be attributed to voters' national partisanship.
• The authors compare patterns across different contest types and across categories of local spending measures (for example, education, roads, public safety, and housing).

Key Findings

• For partisan state and local offices, voters' national partisanship explains a very large share of voting: more than 80% of the within‑contest variation.
• By contrast, national partisanship explains less than 10% of vote variation in local nonpartisan contests and in local ballot measures.
• The role of partisanship in local spending measures is uneven: some service areas show stronger partisan alignment than others (education, roads, public safety, housing are highlighted as varying cases).
• The authors also detect patterned structure in how voters decide on local spending measures, indicating systematic—though largely nonpartisan—relationships across measures.

What This Means for Research and Practice

These results complicate the narrative that all local politics are simply nationalized extensions of top‑line partisan competition. While national party ties strongly predict votes in overtly partisan local contests, many local offices and policy questions remain driven by other factors. For scholars, campaigns, and local officials, the findings suggest that strategies and theories based on national partisan cues will fit some local contests but miss much of the variation in nonpartisan races and ballot measures.