About
Campaign merch is part of how campaigns introduce themselves, and some of it is genuinely great. The Merch Race asks one question over and over, which of these two is better, and turns the answers into a ranking of the best Democratic campaign merch of 2026.
Who is included
Democratic candidates running in 2026 for Senate, Governor, and the House. For now, the House is limited to competitive districts. A campaign appears once it has an online store with merch we could catalog.
Why only Democrats
Because Jake, who made the site, only supports Democrats. The Merch Race is limited to them on purpose, and every Democrat here is judged only by their merch.
How voting works
Each matchup shows you two items from different campaigns, and you pick the one you like better. You can skip any matchup. Ratings are hidden while you vote so they do not sway your choice, and you will not be shown the same pair twice.
How merch is ranked
Every item starts with a rating of 1500. When an item wins a matchup, it takes points from the item it beat: more for an upset, fewer for beating a lower-rated item. This is an Elo rating, the same idea used to rank chess players. A new item's rating moves in bigger steps for its first 20 matchups, so it finds its level quickly, and in smaller steps after that (in Elo terms, K drops from 40 to 24). An item appears in the rankings after 5 matchups.
Until the site has 2,000 votes, the rankings are provisional. Places and ratings are hidden, and Best merch and Best stores list their top entries in random order.
How stores are ranked
A store's score is the average rating of its 5 highest-rated items, and a store needs at least 3 ranked items to be placed. Scoring only the best few items means a big catalog is not penalized for its filler, and a store cannot win on a single lucky item.
The Stats page
Stats adds up every vote. A face-off shows how often one kind of merch wins when it meets a different kind, grouped by category, by price, and by office. Matchups between two of the same kind are left out, and a bar appears once its group has been in 20 matchups.
Each record names one item. An item needs 10 matchups to hold the best record, the worst record, or the split decision (the record closest to even). The page is recounted every 30 minutes, so it can trail the rankings a little.
Race ratings
The labels next to each candidate, such as Toss-up or Lean D, are race ratings: forecasts from two sources, the Split Ticket 2026 Midterms Model, published by The Argument, and Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. Split Ticket covers House and Senate races and adds a projected margin. Crystal Ball also rates Governor races. Both sources are shown with one spelling (Safe, Likely, Lean, Toss-up). Race ratings are there for context and have no effect on the merch rankings.
Race ratings are current as of for Split Ticket 2026 Midterms Model and for Sabato's Crystal Ball.
Keeping it fair
Voting is anonymous and needs no account. To limit ballot stuffing, every voter passes an automated bot check, and there are limits on how fast anyone can vote.
Privacy
We collect as little as it takes to run a fair vote. Here is all of it:
- A voter cookie. After the bot check, your browser gets one cookie holding a random ID, so we can avoid showing you the same pair twice and enforce the voting limits. It lasts 30 days. It is not tied to your name or used anywhere else.
- Your votes. For each vote we keep the two items, which one you picked, the time, and that random ID.
- A scrambled network address. We store a one-way, salted hash of your IP address with each vote, to catch one connection voting too often. We never store the address itself.
- A vote count in your browser. The lap counter on the vote page is kept in your browser tab and never sent to us.
There are no accounts, and we never ask for your name or email. There are no advertising or tracking cookies and no analytics that follow you around. We do not sell or share what we collect.
The site runs on Cloudflare, which handles every request and runs the bot check (Cloudflare Turnstile). The fonts load from Google Fonts. Both see your IP address as part of delivering their service. Links to campaign stores take you to the campaigns' own sites, where their privacy policies apply.
How AI was used
This site was heavily vibe coded: most of the code, and the tools that collected merch from campaign stores, were written with an AI coding assistant. The editorial calls were not left to it. A human (Jake) reviewed every piece of merch before it was included, and decided how items were grouped, such as the same design sold as a tee and a hoodie.
Who made this
The Merch Race is A Jake Rubinstein Side Project. It is an independent fan site, not affiliated with, authorized by, or paid for by any candidate, campaign, or committee, and it earns nothing from the links to campaign stores. Product names and images belong to their campaigns and are shown to identify the merch being ranked.
Questions, corrections, or a request to remove something: write to contact@TheMerchRace.com.