CA-36:Cook Partisan Voting Index of D +11

I don't think I ever highlighted this fundamental statistic for CA-36. Perhaps I didn't realize there was such an index at the time of the Winograd challenge to Harman. But it's a very important statistic because it measures how safely Democratic or not a Congressional District is. The D +11 for CA-36 means this district is extremely lopsided Democratic. And here's what it's about:

The Cook Partisan Voting Index is a "measure of how strongly an American congressional district leans toward one political party compared to the nation as a whole", and it's measured as follows:

The index for each congressional district is derived by averaging the presidential election results in that district from the prior two elections, then comparing them to how the nation voted as a whole. The index indicates the more successful political party and how many percentage points higher than the national average for that party.

So, the PVI D +11 for this district (CA-36) shows that the Democratic pres. candidate received an average 11 percentage points more votes than the national average in the last two presidential elections. No doubt about it.

The reason I'd been researching this for CA-36 is that I had just gotten done reading about a great progressive candidate, Mark Pera, who is challenging a Bush Dog Democrat, Dan Lipinski in Illinois. And while I think having Lipinski in there is horrible, I'd prefer him to a Republican.

But a quick check of the PVI for the district,D +11.3, told me all I needed to know -- this district is super-safe Democratic. So I plunked some cash down for him without any qualms. If you want more and better Democrats, I recommend you do too!

By the way, the table from the diary referenced above has the PVI for all Bush Dogs, so this table should be an immediate reference when the issue of "the wisdom" of supporting a primary challenge of Bush Dog.