There Were No Purple States On Tuesday

… Every state that elected a Republican candidate for Senate voted for Trump, and every state that elected a Democratic Senate candidate voted for Clinton.

The 2016 Senate elections were the most nationalized ever.

The amount of straight-ticket voting was unusual even for the highly polarized era we live in. Four years ago, for example, Democratic Senate candidates won in some states where President Obama lost by healthy margins, including Indiana, Missouri and North Dakota. Republicans, meanwhile, held their seat in Nevada even though Mitt Romney lost there by 7 percentage points.

Nothing like that happened this year. Instead, one of the clearest trends in recent American politics — growing polarization and partisanship — accelerated. Most voters have sorted themselves into two camps: liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans. This trend is apparent up and down the ballot to a degree that we’ve never seen before. CONT.

Harry Enten, FiveThirtyEight

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