Ticket Splitting in a Nationalized Era

• In Event: Next Steps in Studying Nationalization

Abstract

Party loyalty in U.S. Congressional elections has reached heights unprecedented in the post-war era. Theories of partisanship as informational cues would predict that ticket splitting from national partisanship should be even more rare in low-information elections. Yet, I show that ticket splitting in state and local offices is often higher than in Congress. I use cast vote records from voting machines that overcome ecological inference or survey measurement challenges. I show that a spatial model with a candidate quality differential can explain these patterns. Incumbent candidates attract more ticket splitting. In subsequent work using the same type of cast vote records, my coauthors and I also show that voters who are more moderate as measured by their ballot initiative votes are more likely to split their ticket. Even in a nationalized era, some voters cross party lines to vote for the more experienced and higher quality candidate in state and local elections.

Author

• Shiro Kuriwaki, Yale University