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When we think about how Democratic or Republican a state is, we usually think of how it votes for President and (usually) Senate. But that is a rather shallow look, as there are people who call themselves "independents", who are more likely to provide swing votes.

What electoral returns miss is partisan identification. I am not talking about party registration data, I am interested in CCES survey data, which is a university project which gathers unbiased information on tens of thousands of American voters every election cycle.

Per official party registration data, there is only one Democratic majority state for practical purposes: Maryland. There is only one Republican majority state: Wyoming, though Utah comes close.

I want a list and/or map of all 50 states ranked by this survey from most Democratic to most Republican. The ranking method is where we take the D-R margin (or for a red state R-D margin) in percentage points, and that number. An example from the link above (not what I want), California is 44% Democrat and 26% Republican per party reg data. That gives 18 percentage points.

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  • 1
    This sounds like something fivethirtyeight will have compiled at one point, as part of one of their "independents aren't really independent" articles.
    – Bobson
    Jun 17, 2021 at 16:38
  • Not the same source, but Cook's Political Report has a widely recognized Partisan Voter Index that does basically the same thing. cookpolitical.com/pvi-0
    – ohwilleke ♦
    Jun 18, 2021 at 22:07
  • 1
    Any answer must bear in mind the dangers of taking subsamples of polls to draw conclusions about individual states.
    – CDJB ♦
    Jun 30, 2021 at 14:52
  • The PVI does not take actual partisan identifications. CDJB has an important point about sample size. It should be noted that Independents are far more likely to vote for people who they might disagree with or be a member of the other party as the way they "lean".
    – Number File
    Jul 7, 2021 at 11:51

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If we examine the CCES data, we can split out the responses by state (plus D.C.) and examine the responses to the party-identification, 'pid3' question. In addition, the CCES provides a weight variable that we can apply to the data to ensure we're getting a representative sample of each state's population - according to the CCES FAQ, "State is one of the variables used to construct the target population".

Having done so, we arrive at the following results - unsurprisingly, Washington D.C. is at the top of our list, with a Democratic lead of 62.1 percentage points, while Wyoming, Utah, and Idaho sit at the bottom, with a Republican lead of between 20 and 30 percentage points.

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Below are the full results - note that the respondent totals (Democrat, Republican, Independent, & Other columns) are not integers because weighting has been applied to each response. The code used in this answer can be found on GitHub.

| State | Democrat  | Republican | Independent | Other    | Democrat lead (pp) |
| ----- | --------- | ---------- | ----------- | -------- | ------------------ |
| DC    | 144.1256  | 16.4052    | 38.9692     | 6.1695   | 62.1               |
| MD    | 516.6171  | 209.0855   | 287.9373    | 34.3685  | 29.3               |
| HI    | 73.9223   | 28.1528    | 53.312      | 2.0263   | 29.1               |
| NY    | 1657.1569 | 763.2634   | 862.7511    | 119.4693 | 26.3               |
| MA    | 426.8993  | 149.1443   | 472.6593    | 37.9207  | 25.6               |
| CA    | 2166.7948 | 1001.9362  | 1301.8215   | 171.5298 | 25.1               |
| NJ    | 666.5909  | 391.3402   | 362.4723    | 35.5307  | 18.9               |
| CT    | 214.6217  | 117.1562   | 200.165     | 18.6369  | 17.7               |
| IL    | 875.2273  | 540.4494   | 558.9122    | 73.8036  | 16.3               |
| NV    | 267.3017  | 169.676    | 161.746     | 20.6641  | 15.8               |
| NM    | 134.1839  | 84.6754    | 85.9973     | 13.4963  | 15.6               |
| WA    | 472.9804  | 298.585    | 403.5352    | 66.2484  | 14.0               |
| VA    | 642.0327  | 413.4867   | 527.3681    | 58.9686  | 13.9               |
| VT    | 41.6948   | 28.1073    | 50.2078     | 10.5828  | 10.4               |
| MN    | 310.3748  | 223.4849   | 278.6167    | 42.642   | 10.2               |
| OR    | 276.8067  | 201.4501   | 217.7284    | 56.816   | 10.0               |
| RI    | 50.238    | 35.7148    | 74.0402     | 12.0557  | 8.4                |
| DE    | 84.0697   | 68.1179    | 45.9298     | 7.7521   | 7.7                |
| CO    | 297.5239  | 234.4486   | 380.2379    | 53.2942  | 6.5                |
| MI    | 592.2295  | 493.3579   | 494.1535    | 59.8103  | 6.0                |
| NH    | 97.1591   | 79.3347    | 149.4676    | 6.3508   | 5.4                |
| ME    | 107.2735  | 91.3964    | 92.8959     | 20.0682  | 5.1                |
| NC    | 619.4692  | 556.286    | 514.2729    | 54.6624  | 3.6                |
| PA    | 1024.2002 | 964.2995   | 604.0254    | 88.5159  | 2.2                |
| FL    | 1479.8972 | 1401.8382  | 1133.7669   | 142.5409 | 1.9                |
| TX    | 1609.3756 | 1537.9015  | 1277.2314   | 165.7263 | 1.6                |
| GA    | 706.6904  | 678.938    | 512.2127    | 71.6373  | 1.4                |
| AZ    | 413.9019  | 409.9541   | 430.5206    | 36.4067  | 0.3                |
| MS    | 176.0888  | 175.9591   | 106.9773    | 9.9933   | 0.0                |
| WI    | 342.6163  | 359.7882   | 355.5616    | 29.9576  | -1.6               |
| OH    | 731.1436  | 849.8178   | 750.6494    | 80.4408  | -4.9               |
| IA    | 160.7683  | 188.7934   | 158.6184    | 14.8585  | -5.4               |
| MT    | 42.5388   | 54.2012    | 81.5566     | 17.8502  | -5.9               |
| SD    | 49.7726   | 59.5059    | 37.0646     | 2.9229   | -6.5               |
| SC    | 309.8232  | 391.6238   | 323.4282    | 37.663   | -7.7               |
| AK    | 19.9546   | 29.896     | 48.9126     | 12.0621  | -9.0               |
| TN    | 384.9425  | 546.0095   | 357.0397    | 78.6189  | -11.8              |
| MO    | 361.4005  | 512.1197   | 340.5616    | 33.5587  | -12.1              |
| AL    | 278.5807  | 397.0025   | 248.725     | 26.703   | -12.5              |
| IN    | 353.8866  | 526.7265   | 371.4587    | 59.787   | -13.2              |
| LA    | 174.2027  | 257.2736   | 170.8912    | 17.9018  | -13.4              |
| NE    | 73.885    | 117.8483   | 98.2564     | 19.2076  | -14.2              |
| KS    | 113.4378  | 182.9865   | 113.5916    | 30.0774  | -15.8              |
| AR    | 126.0329  | 223.5942   | 212.3144    | 32.24    | -16.4              |
| OK    | 158.8235  | 261.5316   | 178.4956    | 19.1745  | -16.6              |
| KY    | 281.7643  | 442.3613   | 198.19      | 35.7097  | -16.8              |
| WV    | 94.6795   | 169.814    | 139.3239    | 17.9713  | -17.8              |
| ND    | 38.7878   | 69.7398    | 39.0292     | 9.4948   | -19.7              |
| WY    | 19.1726   | 37.157     | 25.9175     | 6.4899   | -20.3              |
| UT    | 76.6741   | 197.936    | 160.3991    | 27.8248  | -26.2              |
| ID    | 48.5451   | 140.4214   | 107.9066    | 20.7542  | -28.9              |
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