Taegan Goddard's Political Wire

April 10, 2009

The New Partisan Voting Index

Charlie Cook released the lastest Partisan Voting Index (PVI) based on results from last fall's elections. The index is an attempt to find an objective measurement of each congressional district that allows comparisons between states and districts.

For instance, this chart ranks each congressional district from the most Republican (Spencer Bachus's AL-06 at R+29) to the most Democratic (Jose Serrano's NY-16 at D+41).

Key finding from the re-crunched data: There are far fewer swing districts today than there were in the 1990s and Democrats now hold most of them -- 34 of the 50 most potentially competitive districts (those that fall in the R+2 to D+2 category).

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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