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    • Democrats on track to win all but one swing state Senate race
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    Democrats on track to win all but one swing state Senate race

    Harry Posted on

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    WASHINGTON – Duane Canther, a 66-year-old union member who makes parts for auto companies in Michigan, voted for Republican President-elect Donald Trump but backed Libertarian candidate Joseph Solis-Mullen in Michigan’s narrowly decided Senate race.

    Votes like hers are part of Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin’s victory over former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers by 0.4 percentage points to fill the vacant seat left by the retirement of Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., even though Trump won the state. By 1.4 points.

    “I voted just to say I voted for someone. They say if you don’t vote, you can’t complain,” Canther said of the Senate vote.

    “I felt like they were both going back and forth on certain issues,” he added, referring to the Democratic and Republican Senate candidates.

    Neighboring Wisconsin followed a similar path; He re-elected Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin over his Republican opponent Eric Hovde, even as he gave Trump 10 Electoral College votes.

    Will Borden, 32, voted for Trump and a third-party candidate for the Senate over Hovde in Wisconsin.

    “I disagreed with a lot of his policies,” Borden said of Hovde. But he also said he didn’t like Baldwin’s or the Democratic Party’s platform.

    “I don’t vote the party line. “In my opinion, this is stupidity,” he said. “When you go to vote you need to know the facts.”

    These “ticket-splitting” voters helped Trump carry Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina; where Trump emerged victorious, while Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein won the governor’s race. Trump also appears on track to win Nevada and Arizona, which have not yet been called. In the same states, Democratic incumbent Sen. Jacky Rosen and Rep. Reuben Gallego lead their GOP challengers.

    There were important exceptions. Republicans defeated incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in Montana, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, and Bob Casey in Pennsylvania; but all three performed better than Vice President Kamala Harris in their respective states.

    Splitting tickets used to be common, and although that’s becoming less so in an era of rising partisanship, down-ballot results in the state show split tickets can still determine the outcome of key races.

    “There are still differences between the Presidential and Senate races,” said Kyle Kondik, editor-in-chief of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “And those differences showed up in favor of Democrats in those states.”

    Avoiding Joe Biden

    Democrats who won in swing presidential swing states sought to distinguish themselves from President Joe Biden, who has high favorability ratings. under water for yearsand campaigned on an independent brand tailored to their state.

    In Arizona, for example, Gallego did not shy away from the challenges facing border communities and emphasized the need to secure the southern border, one of the most pressing issues in the southwestern state. Rosen in Nevada touted his bipartisan work to improve the state’s infrastructure. Baldwin in Wisconsin emphasized his commitment to policies that support farmers and rural residents, and Slotkin in Michigan stated his commitment to American manufacturing.

    Experts disagree on how split-ticket voters distribute their choices. Some say many of the divided voters who supported Trump gave Democrats a down-ballot victory by simply voting for president or voting third party for lower offices like Borden and Canther. Others say Democrats who cast negative votes win the votes of Trump supporters by separating themselves from the national Democratic Party.

    “Senate candidates are often well known to voters” because they campaign heavily with a flood of advertising, said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

    He argued that because turnout for the presidential and Senate races is similar in most states, there’s a good chance some people are still splitting their tickets between the two parties.

    “So voters in some places are making real distinctions, saying this is not someone who aligns with Trump or represents him in the same way, or someone who has the best interest of the state in mind in a way that other candidates don’t. he said. “And it really is a different story from one state to another.”

    Who are split ticket voters?

    Split-ticket voters were common in the 1970s and 1980s, when the two political parties were more ideologically diverse.

    For example, while Republican President Ronald Reagan won a landslide nationwide in 1984, the states he carried, such as Iowa, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, still sent Democrats to the Senate. While President Bill Clinton was easily re-elected in 1996, Republicans were still elected to the Senate in states Clinton won, such as Arkansas, Oregon, and Maine.

    As the parties grew further apart, it became harder to justify voters voting for candidates of both major parties on the same ballot. Burden estimates that about 1 in 10 voters today are willing to split their votes.

    Tester, Brown and retired West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin (who will be replaced by Republican Senator Jim Justice) were some of the last remaining Senate Democrats from red states.

    Divided voters often turn out less, have less information about candidates, lack a strong party identification and decide at the last minute who they plan to vote for, political scientists say.

    “They are much more sensitive to who individuals are and their performance in office, and much less sensitive to the way Washington defines policy,” Burden said.

    Trump’s victory was so widespread that these voters were not necessarily the ones who made the difference for him. If he had not won Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, or Arizona (all places where the Democratic Senate candidate won or was ahead), he would still have the 270 electoral college votes needed to capture the presidency. If she had also lost North Carolina, that would have made Harris the winner.

    Ticket splitting is more common in gubernatorial elections than in congressional races. For example, former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, led the predominantly Democratic state from 2015 to 2023 but lost the Senate race to Democrat Angela Alsobrooks on Tuesday. The state also voted for Harris for president.

    Victory for Democratic Senate candidates will be the difference between a small Republican majority in the upper chamber (expected to be 52 to 55 seats) and a wide majority that would make it easier for them to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to pass. a law regarding banditry.

    Ticket splitters are “more casual voters,” Burden said, “but they end up being the ones who make a big difference.”

    Harry
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