Welcome back to the Deep Dive. I have to admit,
I didn't expect to find much in a Wikipedia table
of election statistics. Yeah, it's not exactly
a thriller novel. Right. But our source material
today is just this brilliant example of how raw
data can tell a completely compelling story.
We are looking at a single digital page, the
list of United States Senate elections in Delaware.
It is an unconventional text for us to analyze,
for sure. When you first scroll through it, it
just looks like a fairly standard historical
ledger. Yeah, just columns. Exactly. Columns
of dates, politician names, and raw vote counts
stretching back over a century. But if you look
closely at the math, you know, in those shifting
margins, that spreadsheet reveals a sweeping
narrative. It really does. We are going to track
a journey from 1916... all the way to 2024. We're
extracting the hidden stories of how a single
state's political landscape completely transformed
purely through the lens of this electoral data.
But before we jump into the timeline, a really
quick note for you listening. Yes, very important
context here. Right. Looking at a century of
Democrats and Republicans battling it out, our
goal today isn't to pick a side or endorse anyone's
politics. Absolutely not. We're strictly playing
the role of impartial data analysts. That is
a crucial distinction. are not endorsing any
political viewpoints, candidates or parties.
Right. We are simply reporting on the factual
numbers, the historical outcomes and the statistical
trends contained in the original source material.
It is a data set. And we are letting those numbers
do the talking. Nicely put. So with that established,
we need to set the foundation. Let's do it. The
data set doesn't start at the founding of the
country. It begins specifically in 1916. Why
that year? So the starting line of 1916 represents
the first monumental shift we encounter in the
text. Before 1914, United States senators were
elected by state legislatures. Meaning the voters
weren't directly involved. Correct. In Delaware,
that meant the General Assembly made the choice.
But the implementation of the 17th Amendment
mandated the popular election of U .S. senators.
Yeah, so this table begins in 1916 because that
is the exact moment this new democratic reality
went into effect for Delaware's Class I Senate
seat. I think a lot of people see the terms Class
1 and Class 2 Senate seats and just sort of gloss
over them. Sure. But the text uses them to organize
the entire timeline. It is the architecture of
the data. The U .S. Senate is divided into three
classes with staggered terms. That ensures only
about a third of the seats are up for election
every two years. Got it. Delaware, like every
state, has two seats, and they happen to fall
into Class 1 and Class 2. The source material
tracks these two distinct lineages side by side.
That makes sense. And the text also includes
a fantastic piece of historical trivia regarding
the calendar. Oh, right. The dates. Yeah. Elections
are held on the first Tuesday after November
1st. But before 1935, the Senate terms actually
began on March 4th rather than the January 3rd
date we are accustomed to today. So we have an
expanding voter base and staggered terms. OK,
let's unpack this. If we go back to that starting
line in 1916, what does the very first popular
vote look like on this list? In the 1916 class
one election, Democrat Josiah O. Wolcott defeated
the Republican incumbent, Henry A. DuPont. OK.
And I want you to hold on to the winning vote
count here. Wolcott won the seat with just 25
,434 votes. 25 ,000. That's it. That is the baseline
we are working with. Keep that number in mind
because just six years later, we had a data point
that genuinely defies modern political logic.
It really does. The date is November 7, 1922.
Set the scene for us based on the footnotes.
The notes reveal a completely unprecedented logistical
situation. Josiah Wolcott, the winner from that
initial 1916 race, resigned from his seat, which
triggered a special election to fill the vacancy
for the remainder of his term. But because of
the calendar. The special election landed on
the exact same day as the regular election for
the next full term. Put yourself in the shoes
of a voter walking into the booth on that Tuesday
in 1922. You have to vote for the exact same
Senate seat twice on a single piece of paper.
Once for the special election to fill the empty
seat right then and there. And once for the regular
election for the six year term that immediately
follows. It's a double header. A double header.
How did the numbers shake out for the special
election? The Democratic candidate is Thomas
F. Bayer Jr. and the Republican. is T. Coleman
DuPont, who was the incumbent temporarily appointed
to hold the seat. In this special election, Bayard
received 36 ,954 votes. DuPont received 36 ,894
votes. Wait, do the math for me there. That is
a difference of exactly 60 votes out of nearly
74 ,000 cast. 60 individual votes deciding a
United States Senate seat. Incredible, isn't
it? That margin is smaller than the attendance
of a typical high school band. And they had to
run it back for the regular election on the same
day. Did the margins widen? Barely. In the regular
election for the next term, Bayard and DuPont
face off again. Bayard gets 37 ,304 votes. DuPont
gets 36 ,979. So he wins again. He does. Bayard
wins the full term by just 325 votes. Still insanely
close. What's fascinating here is what we find
when we dig into footnotes C and D in the source
material. Whenever an analyst sees margins of
60 votes and 325 votes, they immediately check
the entire field to see if the math was fractured.
To see if someone siphoned off votes. Exactly.
And the notes reveal a third candidate on the
ballot that day named Frank Stevens. The ultimate
spoiler candidate. How many votes did Stevens
pull? In the special election, Frank Stevens
received 581 votes. In the regular election,
he received 608 votes. When an election is decided
by 60 votes, a third -party candidate pulling
in nearly 600 votes is mathematically explosive.
That is almost 10 times the margin of victory.
Look at the proportions. A 60 -vote margin out
of roughly 74 ,000 total ballots is a difference
of less than one -tenth of 1%. Meanwhile, Stevens
captured nearly 1 % of the total vote. If even
a fraction of his supporters had swung to the
runner -up, the entire historical outcome for
that seat flips. Imagine waiting for those results
in 1922. There is no instant digital tabulation.
None. They are waiting for literal hand -counted
paper ballots to be reported from across the
entire state. It is absolute proof, permanently
etched into the historical record, that every
single individual vote can alter a trajectory.
But as we move down the table into the following
decades, that era of chaotic, unpredictable nail
biters fades away. It does. The data reveals
a completely different pattern emerging by the
mid -20th century. We enter an era defined by
the by a profound incumbency advantage. People
liked who they had. Right. Delaware voters began
demonstrating a statistical propensity for keeping
their sitting senators in office for incredibly
long stretches of time. We see this trend materialize
strongly on the Republican side first. Walk us
through the class one seat starting in the 1940s.
We find Republican John J. Williams winning his
first election in 1946. He secures four consecutive
elections, 1946, 1952, 1958, and 1964. 24 years
of holding the exact same seat. And then he passes
the baton to another titan of longevity. Following
Williams in that class one seat is Republican
William Roth. Roth wins in 1970 and then proceeds
to win in 1976, 1982, 1988, and 1994. Five consecutive
elections. Five. And by his 1988 victory, Roth's
vote total peaked at 151 ,115 votes. Our 1916
baseline was 25 ,000, and we're now well into
the 150 ,000s. The data presents an even more
extensive streak if we shift our focus to the
Class II Senate seat. Okay, let's pull up the
Class II data for the year 1972. The Republican
incumbent is J .K. who had already won two terms.
He is challenged by a Democratic candidate named
Joe Biden. And the data shows a remarkably tight
race to kick off this sequence. It does. Biden
receives 116 ,006 votes. Boggs receives 112 ,844
votes. Wow. Close. That is a margin of just over
3 ,000 votes out of nearly 230 ,000 total ballots
cast. While it is not the 60 vote razor's edge
of 1922, statistically, it is a very narrow victory
and it initiates the longest single streak recorded
in this document. According to the table, Biden
wins that seat in 1972 and then successfully
defends it in 1978, 1984, 1990, 1996, 2002 and
2008. Seven consecutive elections. Seven. And
if you track his raw vote totals across that
timeline, you see the sustained growth of the
electorate. He starts with 116 ,000 votes in
72. By his final election on this list in 2008,
his winning vote total had reached 257 ,539.
It's massive growth. So what does this all mean?
When you look at a candidate holding a seat from
1972 to 2008, what is the underlying reality
of that data? The stamina required to maintain
a political position for 36 years is mathematically
staggering. We're looking at an individual who
had to continually appeal to shifting demographics.
Because the voters change? Exactly. The coalition
of voters who elected him in 1972 were in an
entirely different stage of life by 2008, and
an entirely new generation of voters had entered
the pool. Yet the electoral outcome remained
a constant. But, Strux, even those spanning decades
eventually break. They do. And that brings us
to the turn of the millennium. The data points
from the year 2000 onward reveal another substantial
shift in the state's political behavior, coupled
with just an absolute explosion in voter turnout.
Returning to Class 1C, we left off with William
Roth, who had secured five consecutive terms.
In the year 2000, that streak ends. The streak
breaker. Democrat Tom Carper defeats Roth, capturing
181 ,566 votes to Roth's 142 ,891. And true to
the historical pattern we've identified, Carper
breaking one streak merely serves as the catalyst
for a new one. Ah, of course. He goes on to win
in 2006, 2012 and 2018. We observe a similar
transition in the class two seat. The seven term
run that began in 1972 concludes, which necessitates
a special election in 2010. What do the numbers
look like there? In the 2010 special election,
Democrat Chris Coons defeats Republican Christine
O'Donnell. The vote counts here clearly reflect
the newly expanded electorate. Coons wins with
174 ,012 votes, while O'Donnell receives 123
,053. Those are huge numbers compared to the
early days. And following the established incumbency
trend, Coons builds his own consecutive streak,
securing reelection in 2014 and 2020. Which brings
us to the present day in our source material.
The most recent data point on the list is the
2024 class one election. Democrat Lisa Blunt
Rochester wins the seat with 283 ,298 votes against
Republican Eric Hansen's 197 ,753 votes. If we
connect this to the bigger picture, this is where
the sheer scale of the transformation becomes
undeniable. Think back to Josiah Wolcott's victory
in 1916. Right. Wolcott won the entire state
with 25 ,434 votes. Compare that to 2024. The
winning candidate secured over 283 ,000 votes.
It's just wild. The runner -up secured nearly
198 ,000 votes. The candidate who lost in 2024
received almost eight times as many votes as
the candidate who won a century prior. Unbelievable.
The winner in 2024 received more than 10 times
the votes of the 1916 winner. A tenfold increase
in raw votes. volume. Now, it is easy to just
attribute that to population growth, but it has
to be more complex than just a higher headcount
in the state, right? It is far more complex.
The physical population expanded, certainly.
But this exponential growth also tells a profound
story about the expansion of the franchise and
civic participation. Right. We're looking at
the mathematical results of generations of voter
registration drives, increased access to the
ballot box, changes in voting rights and a public
that became deeply numerically engaged in the
electoral process. The sheer volume of Democratic
participation multiplied. It is incredible to
see societal evolution captured purely in columns
of numbers. Now, we've spent a lot of time analyzing
the titans of this list, the candidates pulling
in hundreds of thousands of votes. Here's where
it gets really interesting. I want to look at
the opposite end of the spectrum, the quirks
and the margins. The footnotes of this Wikipedia
page are an absolute goldmine for statistical
outliers. They really are. Amidst these giants
battling for statewide supremacy, you have these
incredibly small anomalies. Give us the data
from the 1934 election. In 1934, John G. Townsend
Jr. wins with over 52 ,000 votes. But Note E
documents an additional candidate on the ballot,
John T. Lodkoski. Total votes received across
the entire state. 69. 69 votes. And it is not
an isolated incident. Look at 1964. John Jay
Williams is pulling in over 100 ,000 votes to
secure his fourth term. But down in Note G, we
find Joseph B. Holland, a candidate who received
exactly 71 votes. As analysts, we have to appreciate
the friction between the effort required to run
and the statistical payout. Securing a place
on a United States Senate ballot requires genuine
logistical work. Yeah, it's not easy. You have
to file official paperwork, meet state requirements.
publicly declare a candidacy, to navigate that
entire process for one of the highest offices
in the land, and to walk away with fewer than
100 votes across an entire state. The contrast
is striking. You really have to wonder at the
mechanics of a statewide campaign that nets 69
votes. That is essentially an extended family,
a few supportive neighbors, and maybe a bowling
team. Pretty much. A moderately successful local
bake sale has more foot traffic than that Senate
campaign had voters. While it provides a moment
of levity in the data, These micro candidates
serve a very vital purpose in the historical
record. How so? They are a permanent testament
to the accessibility of the ballot. The system
was open to more than just the political titans
backed by massive organizational machines. Anyone
who met the legal criteria could enter the arena.
That's a great point. Joseph B. Holland and John
T. Vladkovsky are forever recorded in the exact
same historical ledger as the candidates who
served for 36 years. Their 70 -something votes
represent participation in the Democratic record
just as legitimately as the hundreds of thousands
of votes do today. That is a surprisingly...
elegant way to view a footnote, and I think it
perfectly encapsulates the journey we have taken
today. We started by looking at a supposedly
dry Wikipedia table, just dates, names, and numbers.
But as the data revealed, that simple table serves
as a remarkably accurate mirror reflecting a
changing electorate. We tracked the fundamental
shift from General Assembly appointments to popular
votes in 1916. We analyzed the intense mathematical
tension of a 60 -vote margin deciding a U .S.
Senate seat in the double election of 1922. We
observed the decades -long streaks of incumbents
who managed to hold on to their seats through
changing generations. And we quantified the absolute
explosion of voter turnout, swelling from 25
,000 winning votes to well over 280 ,000 by 2024.
It really makes you rethink the numbers in your
own life. I want you, listening right now, to
pull up the raw data from your own local elections.
Look at the vote counts for your city council,
your mayor, or your own state's representatives.
Those raw numbers aren't just trivia. They are
telling a specific story about your community's
growth, its history, and its shifting values.
Sometimes a column of data captures a narrative
that words alone just can't articulate. This
raises an important question, one that I think
is worth dwelling on long after we wrap up today's
analysis. It is a question based purely on the
extremes of the text we've examined. I love these.
Let's hear it. When you look at a race like Thomas
F .B .R. Jr. winning by just 60 votes, in a pool
around 74 ,000 total voters in 1922, compared
to Lisa Blunt Rochester winning in a modern pool
of nearly half a million voters in 2024, does
the mathematical weight of a single individual
vote feel more powerful when the electorate is
tiny? Or does the sheer scale and magnitude of
modern turnout make the collective voice of the
people more profound? That is a phenomenal thought
to end on. Does the power lie in the closeness
of the margin or the roar of the crowd? You really
can't help but look at the data differently once
you start asking those kinds of questions. Well,
that is all the time we have for our analysis
today. I want to thank you for joining us on
this deep dive into the numbers. It's been a
fantastic experience unpacking the century of
data with you. Remember, whether you are looking
at a history book or a seemingly boring spreadsheet,
there's always more to learn. See you next time.