Split-Ticket Voters Buoy Democrats in Key Senate Races

The New York Times ^ | Oct. 19, 2024 | Catie Edmondson

[E. Pluribus Unum]

On matters of substance and style, there is little distance between former President Donald J. Trump and Kari Lake, the bombastic former news anchor running for Senate in Arizona.

Both rose to fame on television. Both have refused to concede their last election. And both favor the incendiary rhetoric that delights supporters in the base of the Republican Party.

But there is a vast distance between them in the polls in the Grand Canyon state. Mr. Trump has consistently put up competitive polling numbers, while Ms. Lake has routinely lagged behind her Democratic opponent, Representative Ruben Gallego.

A similar phenomenon is playing out in at least two other battleground states where polling shows that despite Mr. Trump’s competitive standing, Republican challengers in pivotal Senate races are trailing the Democratic incumbents. In Nevada, Sam Brown, an Army veteran whom Mr. Trump helped elevate out of a crowded primary race, is trailing Senator Jacky Rosen, the mild-mannered, low-profile freshman Democrat. In Pennsylvania, David McCormick, a businessman, has begun to close what polling showed last month was a nine-point deficit with Senator Bob Casey.

Ticket-splitting, in which voters choose candidates of different parties for different offices up and down the ballot, has for years been on the wane in the United States, as partisan polarization has consumed American politics. But polling this year, which suggests that some conservative-leaning voters in critical states are rejecting Republican candidates for Senate even as they support the party’s presidential nominee, seems to indicate important pockets of the country where it is very much alive and could boost Democrats’ uphill battle to hold their majority in the Senate.

It also underscores what has emerged as a recurring theme: Even candidates who closely mirror Mr. Trump rarely are able...

[chiller]

Similarly, it’s more likely that traditional Ds are drawn to Trump’s magnetism and record than Rs to Harris because she can’t draw flies.

I envision the hard-core 25% voting for Harris, but few more than that. 60/40

[FLT-bird]

This is what Leftists are praying for knowing Heels Up Harris is going to get crushed. The problem is, but for the example of Susan Collins in Maine, there are no others. Ticket splitting has gone the way of the dodo. That means several Democrat senate candidates are going down.