Ballotpedia's Tuesday Count for 2018
Voters in 37 states decided 155 statewide ballot measures in November 2018. A total of 167 statewide ballot measures were certified for 2018 ballots, but 12 were decided at pre-November elections. Ballot measures for the November 2018 election were finalized with the exception of several ongoing court cases.
This page was updated weekly once the final count for the week is complete. To see if any measures were certified during the current week, see the chart below.
This year started out with a lower-than-average number of statewide measures certified for the ballot. By the 10th week of the year, the certification count was at about two-thirds of the average since 2010. The average number of certified measures for even-numbered years from 2010 through 2016 was 173 by the fourth Tuesday of September. The average number of total statewide measures certified for the ballot by the end of the year from 2010 through 2016 was 173.
- 2010: A total of 184 measures were certified for the 2010 ballot.
- 2012: A total of 188 measures were certified for the 2012 ballot.
- 2014: A total of 158 measures were certified for the 2014 ballot.
- 2016: A total of 162 measures were certified for the 2016 ballot.
The graph below shows the number of certifications in each week of 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016, as well as the average for each week. The graph also shows 2018 certifications and was updated each week until ballots are finalized for all states, and the last measure is certified for the ballot. See the chart in the following section for a full list and timeline of certifications.
The 2018 Tuesday Count chart of certifications
The chart below shows on a week-by-week basis the number of ballot measures that become certified for the 2018 ballot, including several measures that were certified for the 2018 ballot in 2016 and 2017.[1]
- Certified means that the relevant state election authority legally determined that the ballot measure would be on a statewide ballot.
- Ballot measures listed in the third column of the chart were certified in the week leading up to that Tuesday's count.
One of the reasons that Ballotpedia staffers create this week-by-week certification chart each year (starting in 2010) is to enable a rough estimate as the year progresses about how many measures will ultimately be on the ballot. That's because there is a rough correlation between how many measures have been certified by, say, June 15 and how many ultimately qualify for the ballot.[2]
Methodological notes:
- At times, court decisions remove from the ballot a once-certified measure. If and when that happens, the change in certification status is documented in the chart.
- Some automatic ballot referrals, including constitutional convention ballot questions in some states, are mandated in a state's constitution to appear on the ballot at pre-set intervals (such as 10, 16, or 20 years). We define those as "pre-certified."
Footnotes
- ↑ If it was discovered in, for example, June that the chart had been missing a measure all year that was legally certified before January 1, the chart was retroactively updated in each cell to reflect that reality.
- ↑ Ballotpedia.org, "Data spreadsheet: Ballot measures certified over time," accessed April 2, 2018