Does Split-Ticket Voting Matter? It will in 2024 if Trump is on the Ballot
May 15, 2023
The Wisconsin Institute of Law & Liberty (WILL) a conservative organization concluded in a report they wrote in looking at the 2020 Presidential election where Donald Trump claimed voter fraud made Joe Biden President, that:
A close review, including a hand count of roughly 20,000 ballots from 20 wards, uncovered no evidence of fraudulent ballots or widespread voter fraud.
Our hand review found that the counts closely matched those reported by the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC). The review found no evidence of fraudulent ballots.
In many of the wards examined, WILL found a significant number of voters who voted for Biden and a Republican for Congress, while far fewer voters split the other way.
A review of 5,800 pages of election inspector statements, a formal procedure for poll workers to document key election statistics and incidents, revealed few issues.
This report was issued well before the testimony and release of emails from Fox News on-air “talent” (they are not really journalists, just theatrical TV personalities), as well as Fox News management in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit that they knew the election was not stolen from Trump. I am sure that Guy Reffitt, a January 6th participant/rioter who was sentenced to serve more than seven years in prison when he brought a gun into the capitol to do his part to help Trump overturn the election results because he believed the election was stolen from Trump, will be pleased to hear Fox News admit there was no election fraud that made Joe Biden President.
Admittedly, Fox News did not invent the notion of massive voter fraud associated with the 2020 election, Trump was able to do that all by myself. The crime of Fox News is that it magnified the lie. It could have interjected some doubt about voter fraud which would matter for the present and the future. It now appears this issue will hover over, at least, the next several elections to come, with or without Trump around absorbing media attention.
The important point in my partial quote from the WILL report is the part that states, “a significant numbers of voters who voted for Biden and a Republican for Congress,” so ticket-splitting: There were Republicans who voted for other Republicans on the ballot, just not Trump. This issue of Republicans deciding not to vote for Trump in 2020, although we can assume they voted for him in 2016, was drowned out by the attention focused on voter fraud.
Biden in 2020 won Wisconsin by roughly 20,700 votes. Georgia gets the attention because of Trump’s call to the Georgia Secretary of States to go “find him” enough votes to have Trump declared the winner of that state. Wisconsin indicates that Republicans nationally will, unfortunately, still be too focused on voter fraud. What matters is to closely examine split-ticket voting and consider that Trump is a bad choice to be the Republican Party candidate in 2024, again.
In the 2016 election, Trump won Wisconsin by a bit more than 22,700 votes over Hillary Clinton, and in 2020, Biden won the state by slightly more than 20,700 votes. In comparing Trump's loss in 2020 with his win in 2016, that is a sizable shift in votes. The WILL report noted Trump’s performance in relationship to past Republicans running for President:
[T]he [simplest] explanation [is] that President Trump engendered historic appeal in the more remote rural parts of the country, including Wisconsin. And he lost more appeal in the major urban centers and their surrounding suburbs. His appeal in the more blue-collar urban centers remained on average with historical Republicans.
Biden 's win can be understood by examining how Democrats did in races for Congress in 2020. A FiveThirtyEight report noted that while Biden received 51.1 percent of the national vote, the Democrats in House of Representative races collectively received 50.6 percent of the vote share. This may not seem like a whole lot, and this FiveThirtyEight study added that ticket-splitting was not a big deal. I would suggest that what happened in Wisconsin tells us a different story.
In the 2016 election, Trump won Pennsylvania by approximately 44,200 votes, Biden won Pennsylvania in 2020 by roughly 82,100 votes. In 2016, Trump won Michigan by approximately 10,700 votes, Biden won Michigan in 2020 by roughly 154,100 votes. In 2016, Trump won Arizona by approximately 91,200 votes, Biden won Arizona in 2020 by roughly 10,700 votes. And then there is Georgia where Trump expected the Secretary of State to just roll over, play dead and do what he wanted him to do-find him votes. The total Electoral College votes for Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin come to 73. The Electoral College vote count in 2020 was Biden (306), Trump (232), a shift of 73 votes would have meant 305 for Trump and 233 for Biden.
In the case of Arizona and the 2020 election, one study concluded that 59,800 voters voted for Republicans on the ballot for all other offices, but not for Trump. In Pennsylvania, split-ticket voting had its impact, as one Republican who voted for Trump in 2016 but not for him in 2020 put it, “Although I voted for Mr. Trump in the previous election, I was very dissatisfied with his performance. I think he completely dropped the ball on the COVID thing.” In Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Trump lost the county in 2016 by 21 percentage points and by 26 percentage points in 2020, but Todd Stephens, a Republican won re-election to the House of Representatives. Stevens won re-election in 2018 with 51.5 percent of the vote and won again in 2020 with 53.1 percent of the vote. Redistricting affected the outcome of the 2022 race, and he lost to a Democrat. But this indicates problems if Trump is on the ballot in 2024.
Split-ticket voting tends to get a bad rap from election analysts, and they may be correct that there are broader trends or other ways to examine elections. One study after the 2020 election, for example, stated, “The nationalization of politics is now complete.” Another study examined the Congressional districts where a Democrat or Republic won the seat, but the district voted for the other guy for President (Biden or Trump):
Since 1992, there have been an average of 70 split [Congressional] districts in each cycle, though the average since 2012 has been only 29. 2020 stands out even in recent history.
In the case of the 2020 election, there were only 16 House districts that split their votes.
Texas ended straight-ticket voting in the 2020 election, so, technically by going down the ballot and voting for each candidate and issue, this could have an impact on split-ticket voting. The Democrats opposed the elimination of straight ticket, seeing it as a burden placed on voters of color. If the elimination of straight ticket voting in Texas was expected to adversely affect the Democrats, it might have encouraged Republican voters to reject Trump. One article stated regarded this change, “[There was] a willingness of some Texas voters to split their tickets, rejecting Trump but nonetheless pulling the levers for the Republican Party’s other candidates.”
Trump won the Colorado Congressional 3rd District by 12 points in 2016 and by 6 points in 2020. This is Congresswoman Lauren Boebert’s district and some of the movement away from Trump can be seen in Boebert’s close win in 2022, even though Trump was not on the ballot. Boebert only won re-election by 546 votes, although it was expected she would easily win, some predictions were by as much as 9 percentage points. This might be an unusually way to see spilt-ticket voting, but it might give an indication that Republican voters are willing to have negative views of Trump. Boebert is seen as a close and vocal ally of Trump, and one way to see her close win is an indication of how Republican voters feel about Trump.
The PEW Research Center in a 2006 report addressed the differences between regular voters and intermittent voters, in others words the faithful voters who political parties can count on to show up at the voting booth (or drop box) and those that are questionable as to their willingness/motivation/desire to vote. Perhaps in a general way, these two groups can be divided as those with college degrees and those without, but I suspect that generalization fails to address the overlap. The point that stood out to me about this survey was that 38 percent of regular voters saw themselves as conservative while only 22 percent of intermittent voters saw themselves as conservative. Intermittent voters are five times more likely to say they are too busy to vote. Making voting harder by reducing the use of drop boxes, for example, only increases their reasons to not vote. With 25 percent of intermittent voters considering themselves as Republicans, while 20 percent consider themselves as Democrats, slight differences matter in the outcome of an election. Voters more likely to vote and who have strong ideological beliefs, are less likely to do split-ticket voting. Encouraging those intermittent voters to get out and vote and knowing slightly more of them are Republicans than Democrats, may only contribute to problems for the Republican Party, particularly if Trump is back on the ballot in 2024. These intermittent voters might be more inclined to split their vote.
Some insight about split-ticket voting could be gleamed from the 2022 Senate and Governor’s race in Pennsylvania. Doug Mastriano, the Republican running for governor was seen as too close to Trump, much like Boebert, and, in his own way, he was seen as a polarizing figure with some views that were considered too extreme for some Pennsylvanian voters. One voter who planned to vote for Mehmet Oz, the Republican running for a Senate seat, and Josh Shapiro, the Democrat running for governor said, “I don't like the whole thought of picking the lesser of two evils. But I'm entertaining that.” No clue how this voter actually voted, but it was apparent Mastriano was seen as encouraging voters to vote split-ticket because of his extreme positions. A USA Today/Suffolk University survey found that about 3 percent of Pennsylvanian voters planned to vote against Mastriano but for Oz, while 1 percent of the voters planned to split-ticket vote and vote for Mastriano and John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate candidate. This slight lean of split-ticket voters against Mastriano might indicate that Presidential voters are not done expressing their displeasure in Trump running again for President.
Since, as indicated by the USA Today/Suffolk University survey, ticket-splitting can go both ways (3 percent and 1 percent), I took 2 percent as the difference and applied that to the five states addressed in this article (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin). These five states went for Trump in 2016 and the same five went for Biden in 2020, a total of ten election results. In seven out of ten of these election results, the vote difference between the winner and loser was less than 2 percent. In 2016 in Trump’s wins in Arizona and Georgia and in 2020 in Biden’s win in Michigan, the vote difference exceeded 2 percent: Split-ticket voting might matter, under the right circumstances. In other words, in the 2020 election, Trump lost Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin by less than 2 percent, a total of 66 Electoral College votes. The vote difference in Michigan in 2020 was just under 2.8 percent. If Trump’s Waco, Texas rally at the end of March and his appearance on a so-called townhall meeting recently on CNN was supposed to start the process of showing a Republican (possible) Presidential candidate who has a sincere desire to actually win the Presidency in 2024, all it showed was a foolish old man with malice in his heart, who will do nothing but encourage more split ticket voting.
Notes
Laura Benshoff and Katie Meyer, “They rejected Trump, but stuck with Republicans down-ballot. Meet Pa.’s ticket splitters,” WITF (November 12, 2020); https://whyy.org/articles/they-rejected-trump-but-stuck-with-republicans-down-ballot-meet-pa-s-ticket-splitters/
Philip Bump, “2020 saw the least split-ticket House voting in decades,” Washington Post (February 19, 2021): https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/19/2020-saw-least-split-ticket-house-voting-decades/
Kaelan Deese, “Arizona election analysis finds GOP voters disenchanted with Trump helped Biden win,” Washington Examiner (June 17, 2021): https:// www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/arizona-election-analysis-finds-gop-voters-disenchanted-with-trump-helped-biden-win
Will Flanders, Kyle Koenen, Rick Esenberg, Noah Diekemper, Miranda Spindt, Report Summary: A Review of the 2020 Election, Will: Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (December 2021): https:// will-law.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/2021ReviewStudy.pdf
Nathaniel Rakich, Ryan Best, “There Wasn’t Much Split-Ticket Voting in 2020,” FiveThirtyEight (December 2, 2020): https:// fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-wasnt-that-much-split-ticket-voting-in-2020/
Bethany Rodgers, “Who are Pennsylvania’s split-ticket voters? We talked to some,” yahoo!news (October 27, 2022): https://news.yahoo.com/pennsylvanias-split-ticket-voters-talked-020457340.html
Alex Samuels, “How split-ticket voting might have saved two Republican Texas lawmakers in a blue county,” The Texas Tribune (November 16, 2020); https://
Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Carrie Dunn and Melissa Holzberg, “Split-ticket districts dwindle as all politics becomes more national,” NBC News (February 23, 2021): https://
“Who Votes, Who Doesn’t, and Why?” PEW Research Center (October 18, 2006): https:// www.pewresearch.org/politics/2006/10/18/who-votes-who-doesnt-and-why/