Split-Ticket Voting Plays Role in 2024 Election

A voting sign outside of the Masjid Al Falah polling place in Hamtramck, Mich, on Nov. 5, 2024. Davslens Photography/The Epoch Times

President-elect Donald Trump won the White House, but split-ticket voting played a notable role in the 2024 election.

North Carolina, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, and Michigan saw voters split their ballots between candidates of different parties.

“Unseating an incumbent senator is challenging, even when Trump notches a landslide victory in the presidential race,” GOP strategist Ford O'Connell told The Epoch Times.

“Success often hinges on name recognition, which explains why incumbent senators win 90 percent of the time. Despite potentially missing out on a couple of opportunities, the fact that Republicans gained four Senate seats in this election remains a big deal.”

North Carolina

Although Trump won the Tar Heel State, Democrats had a good night in other statewide races.

Attorney General Josh Stein easily defeated Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson in the gubernatorial race by more than 14 percentage points, giving the Democrats another four years in the governor’s mansion; they'll have had 12 years there by the end of Stein’s term in 2028.

Stein outperformed Democrat presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in the five most heavily populated counties of Wake, Mecklenburg, Guilford, Forsyth, and Durham.

In the attorney general race, Rep. Jeff Jackson (D-N.C.) defeated Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) by a little less than 3 percentage points. He also outperformed Harris in the aforementioned counties.

In the race to succeed Lt. Gov. Robinson, North Carolina state Sen. Rachel Hunt, a Democrat, defeated GOP state official Hal Weatherman by almost 2 percentage points. She also exceeded Harris’s margins in Wake, Mecklenburg, Guilford, Forsyth, and Durham counties.

There were a few factors behind the split-ticket voting in North Carolina, according to Duke University political science professor Jon Green.

“This is to some sense in keeping with a pattern: North Carolina Democrats have tended to do better in state-level statewide elections than federal statewide elections in recent cycles,” he told The Epoch Times.

For example, Trump won North Carolina and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) won reelection in 2020, but North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, also won reelection.

“There are a few things that could explain this more general trend,” Green said. “Voters might want a Democratic check on the Republican-controlled state legislature, or they may see North Carolina’s Democratic nominees as more moderate than the Democratic nominees for federal office.”

Green also noted that statewide Democrats and national Democrats might have been held to different standards. For example, he said, inflation is not only specific to North Carolina, and therefore state Democrats may not deserve the blame.

Finally, he said, candidate quality mattered, calling Robinson “a weak, scandal-plagued candidate,” and Democrats tied other Republicans to him. Robinson has come under fire for numerous controversies.

Wisconsin

Although Trump won the Badger State, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) narrowly won the Senate race over Republican businessman Eric Hovde by less than a percentage point.

Trump won the state by 29,594 votes, while Baldwin won her race by 28,958 votes. The margin between Trump and Hovde was 54,027 votes. Both Trump and Baldwin won their races by 0.86 percentage points.

However, one candidate disappointed.

While Harris outperformed Baldwin in Milwaukee County and Dane County, where the state capitol of Madison is located, Hovde underperformed in those counties. For example, the gap between Trump and Hovde in Milwaukee County was 6,317 votes.

In Racine County, the sixth-largest county in the state, Harris received 347 more votes than Baldwin. But Hovde got 1,559 fewer votes than Trump.

In the next largest county, Winnebago, Hovde also lagged behind Trump’s 49,179 votes by a margin of 1,914. Baldwin, who has been in the Senate since 2013 and in Congress since 1999, got 44,720 votes, while Harris received 63 fewer votes.

Baldwin’s win can be attributed to her being a known entity in Wisconsin, according to University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee professor Kathleen Dolan.

“She is very much a senator who works hard behind the scenes with a real focus on achieving things for Wisconsin,” she told The Epoch Times.

“Senator Baldwin is very close to the agriculture industry in the state and received the endorsement of the Farm Bureau this year. So I think there are a number of Republicans who understand that the state benefits from her work on our behalf, which is not something they were guaranteed to experience with a new senator if we elected Eric Hovde.”

Michigan

In the Wolverine State, Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) won against former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) despite that Trump won the state.

Trump won against Harris by 81,324 votes, while Slotkin beat her GOP challenger by 18,412 votes.

In Wayne and Oakland counties, the two largest counties in Michigan, Slotkin had slightly better margins than Harris—which made a difference in what were close races.

In Wayne County, Trump got 288,788 votes, while Rogers received 267,678 votes—a difference of 21,110 votes.

In Oakland County, Harris received 419,121 votes, while Slotkin got 418,632. But Trump got 337,592 votes, while Rogers received just 325,715. That is a difference of 11,877 votes.

In the third-largest county, Macomb, Trump received 284,639 votes, while Rogers got 265,865 votes—18,774 fewer votes. Slotkin got 217,649 votes, while Harris received 214,930 votes—2,719 fewer votes.

“There were a lot more third-party votes in the Senate race than there were for president, and that difference is more than sufficient to explain why Trump won and Rogers lost,” Wayne State University political science professor Jeffrey Grynaviski told The Epoch Times.

Nevada

Despite that Trump won the Silver State, Republican military veteran Sam Brown lost to incumbent Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.).

The Senate race came down to the fact that Rosen was the incumbent, according to UNLV political science professor Daniel Lee.

“The simplistic answer is that Rosen is the incumbent who significantly outspent a less-known challenger. So in general, we expect incumbents to get a little electoral boost,” he told The Epoch Times.

Rosen raised more than $46.5 million, while Brown raised a little more than $20 million.

Lee noted that a split also happened in 2022, when incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-Nev.) won reelection despite that Joe Lombardo, a Republican, was elected governor.

Arizona

While Trump won the Grand Canyon State, Republican former news anchor Kari Lake lost to Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.).

In the end, it may have come down to a key demographic, according to Arizona State University political science professor James Strickland.

“There’s a lot of talk of Hispanic voters voting more often for Trump these days, so it could be the case that Hispanic people voted more often for Trump but not Lake, preferring instead Ruben Gallego who is Hispanic,” he told The Epoch Times. “Nearly a third of Arizona’s population consists of people with Hispanic heritage, so that may explain the discrepancy.”