Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s 2010 Statewide Electoral Performance

Buttigieg’s Electoral Performance In Indiana Context

Pete Buttigieg ran for Treasurer of State in Indiana in 2010 against Republican Richard Mourdock, best known for a disastrous 2012 Senate race where he made comments about rape and what “God intended.” Buttigieg lost the Treasurer race 62.5% to 37.5%, a margin of 24.9%, which represents a nadir for Democratic performances in the state. The other four statewide Democratic candidates in Indiana that year lost by margins between 14.6% to 21.3%. We have compiled the 51 Indiana statewide elections with a Democratic and Republican candidate since 1996 (the oldest year with a source for official election results online) and found that only one Democrat lost by more than Buttigieg did in 2010: David L. Johnson in 2000, the opponent of famously popular Richard Lugar for Senate. Of the 51 elections, Democrats won eight, and the median margin was a Republican win by 11.0%.

Buttigieg’s Electoral Performance In a Nationwide Context

Nationwide in 2010, 21 states held elections with both a Democratic and Republican candidate for the office of Treasurer.* By pure margin, Buttigieg did the 17th best of any Democrat. However, this is generally not how these comparisons are made, since it is unfair to expect a Democrat to do as well in Alabama as in California. A better comparison is the difference between a candidate’s margin and that of the most recent presidential election. By this standard, Buttigieg ran 25.9 percentage points behind Barack Obama’s 2008 results in Indiana, which is 19th out of 21 nationally. The two worst performing candidates were in Illinois, which is perhaps explicable by Obama’s home state advantage creating a skew in the presidential results, and Nebraska, where there is no obvious reason for Democrat Mark Stoj to have done 30.9 percentage points worse than Obama. The median performance relative to Obama was to run 7.9 marginal percent behind him, roughly even with the lean of the year.

*This includes Florida’s office of Chief Financial Officer, a position which the offices of Treasurer and Comptroller were consolidated into in 1998. It does not include any other offices not titled Treasurer.