Ticket-splitting could be making a comeback. Democrats should hope so.
Ticket-splitting could be making a comeback. Democrats should hope so.
By Karen Tumulty at the Washington Post
Deputy editorial page editor and columnist|
October 11, 2022 at 6:39 p.m. EDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/ticket-splitting-voting-midterm-election-democrats/?utm_source=reddit.com
"SNIP......
During an election season in which it seems political polarization could not get much worse, there are signs that something counterintuitive is going on in crucial races across the map: the tentative re-emergence of the split-ticket voter, a species that was thought to have gone all but extinct.
It is this share of less robotically partisan voters that could make all the difference, given the tightness of the contests that will determine which party controls Congress and state houses throughout the country. The shift is a reflection of both the seriousness of what’s at stake and the unseriousness of many of the candidates that the Republican Party has placed on the ballot, largely at the behest of former president Donald Trump. It also could reflect the higher quality of the candidates the Democrats have put forward — who in the races that matter most are generally outperforming President Biden’s approval rating — and the degree to which the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade has shifted the political dynamic.
Split-ticket voting has been on a long decline, beginning in the 1970s when congressional and gubernatorial elections started becoming more nationalized. As a result, the conservative Democrats of the South and the moderate Republicans of the Northeast, once formidable blocs, have disappeared in Congress.
Daniel J. Moskowitz, a political scientist at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, has identified another contributing factor: There are fewer local news outlets these days to give voters information they can trust on the issues that most affect their daily lives, so they turn more to their own partisan inclinations.
......SNIP"
= new reply since forum marked as read
