Whatever happens in today’s elections, we can be certain that advocates will try to spin the results to demonstrate that their preferred policies were big winners, or at least not major losers. Unless your issues are “affordability,” “corruption,” or “Donald Trump,” that’s likely going to be a stretch. But doubly so for education, given the small role it has played this year, even in fights for governors’ mansions.
As has been the norm in the Trump Era, education has not been a major factor in this election, yet this election will have major consequences for education policy.
It’s possible we’ll see a few races where a particular education issue made a difference at the margins. Private school choice, especially, may be one of those factors. Advocates will make the case that universal education savings accounts initiatives and the like helped Republican lawmakers or gubernatorial candidates do better than they otherwise would; opponents (including the teachers unions) will claim that big Republican losses prove that vouchers are political kryptonite.
Let me attempt to “pre-register” a reasonable methodology for settling these disputes, just as some scholars now pre-register their research protocols at the outset of their academic work. That methodology has three steps:
1. Determine whether a candidate significantly over- or underperformed relative to the national shift. Tip O’Neill may have said that “all politics are local,” but in recent years, our elections have been increasingly nationalized, with local issues (and the strengths and weaknesses of individual candidates) mattering less. So if someone argues that school choice explains an outcome in a contest today, first ask: Did the candidate in question perform any differently than we would expect given the national environment?
If there’s a big blue wave, we might see Democrats beat Republicans by 10 percentage points on average (in the “popular vote” for the House). That would represent an 11-point swing from 2024. So we should expect to see a similar swing in each state too (plus or minus a few points, given that state’s specific demographics). If that’s where races land, more or less, we can chalk that up to political fundamentals rather than particular issues—school choice included. That would be the end of the story.
2. Determine whether school choice played a major role in the campaign. If we do find a candidate that significantly over- or underperforms, it’s still not enough to believe that school choice was a decisive factor. We should also look for evidence that it was a major issue in the contest. In the near term, we might have to rely on subjective analyses, such as news reporting. Did the candidates talk about school choice in their stump speech, or run ads about it? Ideally we’d eventually be able to look at data from firms like AdImpact to see how much money candidates invested in commercials, mailers, etc., with a pro- or anti-school choice message.
3. Ask whether the results could be explained by other obvious factors. Let’s call this the “Occam’s Razor” rule. What’s the simplest explanation for any over- or underperformance we might see? Was there a scandal, or something else that dragged down the candidate or his or her opponent? Another state-specific issue that got lots of attention and may have driven the result? If not, maybe there’s a case that school choice really was a decisive issue.
Let’s play this out a bit by looking at four states where Democrats could flip the governor’s mansion—Georgia, Iowa, Ohio, and Texas—and one school-choice hotbed where a Democratic incumbent is predicted to cruise to re-election (Arizona).
1. Candidate over- or underperformance. When we dig into election results tomorrow (or so we hope!), first we should look at the national shift from 2024 and compare that to the shift in each of these states. If an 11-point national shift really comes to pass, we should expect to see Democratic victories in Georgia (which was Trump+2 in ’24) and Arizona (Trump+5), close results in Ohio (Trump +11), and Republican victories in Texas (Trump+14) and Iowa (Trump+16).
Then we’ll want to ask: did anyone beat the underlying fundamentals—and by more than just a few points? If Rick Jackson manages a win in Georgia, that will represent a dramatic overperformance, given that the state barely went Republican back in 2024, in a much better political environment. (Polls show the race deadlocked.) Katie Hobbs is expected to win in Arizona—but if she does so by only five points or so, as predicted, that may be seen as a nothing-burger—just surfing along the blue wave. Likewise with Amy Acton in Ohio. A victory there will be a big deal in such a red state, but to demonstrate overperformance, she would need to win decisively. Gina Hinojosa in Texas and Rob Sand in Iowa, on the other hand, can only win by significantly outrunning the (expected) blue wave.
2. Was school choice a major campaign theme? That’s our next test. All five of these states have private school choice programs, supported by Republicans and opposed—or at least criticized—by Democrats. We can dig up policy statements from all of them on the topic. But was it a real factor in the election? Arizona has certainly lived through a high-profile fight over its universal ESA initiative. In Texas, Hinojosa made “defending public education” and criticizing Governor Abbott’s “voucher program” a major talking point—fitting given that her political career started with her running for the Dallas school board. But Iowa might be the best test of school choice as a salient issue, given that Sand put his criticism of the state’s program “at the center of his campaign,” according to Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat. Matt explains:
Sand, the state auditor, is proposing new income limits on vouchers to save taxpayer dollars. Iowa, like many Republican-controlled states in recent years, has made subsidies for private schools universally available.
Sand has also argued that the state has neglected public schools by focusing on vouchers and culture-war issues. In one ad, Sand, described as an “Iowa public school dad,” says, “Like most Iowa parents, we want to focus on math and reading — not political agendas from either extreme.” In another commercial, he stands next to his old elementary school as he warns about tax dollars flowing to private schools.
3. What other factors were in play? In Texas, Abbott might be dragged down by the state’s Senate race, featuring scandal-plagued Ken Paxton. Data centers have also become a flashpoint there. In Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy has been struggling for months, thanks to low approval ratings, in part linked to his religion and ethnicity. And that was before his horrific ad featuring his opponent’s long-estranged mother leaked to the public. In Georgia, Jackson has been hammering Keisha Lance Bottoms for mismanaging Atlanta as its mayor. Hobbs is lucky to be facing a terrible opponent in Arizona.
Only in Iowa do I see a strong case that a candidate’s platform on school choice might be considered decisive. (Again, if Sand indeed significantly outperforms the national trends.)
All in all, I end up where I began: skeptical that school choice—or any other education issue—is playing much of a role in this year’s contests, with the exception of Iowa’s race. But if the results surprise us—if, say, Hinojosa not only wins but wins big—I’ll be willing to reconsider.
