Anat Shenker-Osorio

And keep in mind, for both Brown & Baldwin, you have incumbency effect mixed in.

For sure. But if it were true that people are just 100% D or R to their core, we wouldn't see these results. Or we'd see them confined only to the 5-7% you're calling "swing."

90% R and 90% D. Those are the baselines in the polarized era, and definitely the modals. I've seen several creeping up the last couple of cycle to 95%ish. But anything that registers below that 90% split is notable. Less so though in non-competitive elections, like the 2 you're

citing, bc in the absence of competition and spending to reinforce latent partisanship predispositions in both soft-partisans and Indie leaners, some lower info, lower interest voters will move down to their next heuristic, which is incumbency. So long as the economy is stable,