close
close

Apre-salomemanzo

Breaking: Beyond Headlines!

    • Democrats are on track to win all but one Senate election.
    aecifo

    Democrats are on track to win all but one Senate election.

    Umito Posted on

    play

    WASHINGTON — Duane Canther, a 66-year-old union worker who makes parts for Michigan automakers, voted for Republican President-elect Donald Trump, but he supported Joseph Solis-Mullen, the Libertarian candidate in Michigan’s Senate race , hotly contested.

    Votes like hers are part of why Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin beat former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers to fill an open seat left by the retirement of Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan, by 0.4 points of percentage, 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 his Senate vote.

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

    Neighboring Wisconsin followed a similar path, re-electing Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin over Republican challenger Eric Hovde, while giving its 10 Electoral College votes to Trump.

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

    “I just didn’t agree with a lot of his policies,” Borden said of Hovde. But he said he doesn’t like Baldwin’s agenda or that of the Democratic Party, either.

    “I don’t vote for the party line. To me, that’s stupidity,” he said. “You should know the facts when you go to vote. »

    These “ticket splitting” voters helped Trump win Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina – where Trump prevailed while Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein won the governor’s race. Trump also appears poised to win Nevada and Arizona, which have not yet been called. In the same states, incumbent Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen and Rep. Reuben Gallego lead their Republican opponents.

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

    Ticket splitting was once common, and although it is becoming less so in an era of heightened partisanship, down-vote results in swing states show that ticket splitting can still determine the outcome of key races.

    “There are still differences between presidential and Senate elections,” said Kyle Kondik, editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “And those differences broke down in favor of Democrats in those states.”

    Fleeing Joe Biden

    Democrats who prevailed in swing presidential states worked to distinguish themselves from President Joe Biden, whose favorable ratings were underwater for yearsand campaigned on an independent brand tailored to their states.

    In Arizona, for example, Gallego did not shy away from the challenges facing border communities and emphasized the need to secure the southern border, a major issue in the southwestern state. Nevada’s Rosen touted his bipartisan work to improve the state’s infrastructure. Baldwin, Wisconsin, emphasized his commitment to policies supporting farmers and rural residents, and Slotkin, Michigan, emphasized his commitment to American manufacturing.

    Experts disagree on how voters allocate their choices. Some say most voters who voted for Trump are giving Democrats the victory by voting only for president, or by voting for a third party for lower offices, like Borden and Canther. Others argue that down-ballot Democrats won the vote of Trump supporters by distinguishing themselves from the national Democratic Party.

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

    And since turnout was similar for the presidential and Senate elections in most states, he argued, it’s likely that some people still split their ticket between the two parties.

    “So in some places voters are making real distinctions to say this is not someone who is aligned with Trump or representing him in the same way, or this is someone who has the state’s interests in mind in a way that other candidates do not. » he said. “And it’s really a different story from state to state.”

    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 victory nationally in 1984, the states he carried, such as Iowa, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, still sent Democrats to Senate. And even though President Bill Clinton was comfortably re-elected in 1996, Republicans were still elected to the Senate in states Clinton won, such as Arkansas, Oregon and Maine.

    As the parties have grown further apart, it has become more difficult for voters to justify voting for candidates from both major parties on the same ballot. Today, Burden estimates that about one in ten voters are willing to split their ticket.

    Tester, Brown and outgoing West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin — who will be replaced by Republican Sen.-elect Jim Justice — were among the last Senate Democrats from red states.

    Split-ticket voters are generally less engaged, less familiar with the candidates, don’t identify strongly with a party and decide who they plan to vote for at the last minute, political scientists say.

    “They are much more sensitive to who individuals are and how they perform in office and much less sensitive to Washington’s style of policymaking,” Burden said.

    Trump’s victory was so large that these voters didn’t necessarily make the difference for him. Had he not won Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada or Arizona – all places where the Democratic Senate candidate has won or is leading – he would still have the 270 Electoral College votes needed to advance to the presidency. If he 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 heavily Democratic state from 2015 to 2023 but lost his Senate race to Democrat Angela Alsobrooks on Tuesday. The state also voted for Harris for president.

    Victories for Democratic Senate candidates will make the difference between a small Republican majority in the upper house – it is expected to be 52 to 55 seats – and a large majority that would allow them to more easily surpass the 60-vote threshold needed to pass. bill against a systematic obstruction.

    Ticket splitters are “more casual voters,” Burden said, “but they’re ultimately the ones who make a big difference.”

    Umito
    View all posts

    You Might Also Like