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Partisan Voting Index for the 2010 and 2012 US Elections
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Cook Partisan Voting Index or PVI is a measure of how strongly an American
Congressional District or state leans toward one major political party or another compared with the United States as a whole. It was
developed in 1997 by Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan political newsletter, working with Polidata, a political
statistics analysis firm.
The index for each Congressional District or state is derived by
averaging the district or state voting results from the prior two presidential elections (the 2004 and 2008 elections, in this case) and
comparing them to the latest winning national Presidential election results (Barack Obama's 52.9% in 2008, in this case). A
Congressional District or state's index indicates which party's Presidential candidate was more successful in
that district or state, as well as the number of percentage points by which that district or state's results exceeded the national
average. The index is formatted as a letter ("D" for Democrat or "R" for Republican) + a number. For example, Colorado's 2nd
Congressional District has a PVI score of D+11 during the 2010 US Congressional election
because the two most recent Democratic Presidential candidates (John Kerry and Barack Obama) received an average of 11 percentage points more
votes in the 2nd District than Barack Obama's aforementioned national average of 52.9% in 2008. Each PVI is rounded to the nearest whole number.
Please note that US Congressional districts will be re-drawn in 2011 for the 2012 Congressional election, based on the results of the 2010 Census.
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