“I think you have to vote,” he said, “and I have to say, I can’t vote right now for Mr. Walker.”
Ticket-splitters, on the decline for years as the country has grown ever more polarized, could be pivotal this year in several key battlegrounds, according to public polls, which show conspicuous gaps in performance between gubernatorial and Senate candidates of the same party.
Republicans and Democrats are both fighting for these voters in the final weeks of the election, appealing to moderation and sometimes distancing themselves from their party’s other pick at the top of the ticket rather than working together.
Strategists point to uneven spending, the power of incumbency and the candidates themselves to explain the disparities. Several cases underscore how GOP nominees who are polarizing or untested have complicated the party’s efforts to make the midterms a simple referendum on the state of the country, the economy and views of the party in power, some said.
“These people, they’d like to provide a correction on Biden. They’d like to provide a correction on the Democrats,” said Republican strategist Sarah Longwell, who conducts swing-voter focus groups and has been hearing many ticket-splitters. “And the question is whether they can find candidates that they can stomach to do that.”
Ticket-splitting has been dropping for decades, with researchers pointing to rising political divisions. In 2016, every state saw its voters favor the same party for president and the Senate. At the same time, about 11 percent of voters nationwide selected a different party for president and Senate, down from between 20 and 30 percent in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, according to data collected by Daniel Moskowitz, a political scientist at the University of Chicago.
In 2020, Republicans gained seats in the House even as Trump lost to now-President Biden. But local data still showed the lowest levels of split-ticket voting in decades, with few districts favoring different parties for the House and president.
Midterm elections have produced more split results in recent years. Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan election analyst, counts more than a dozen states this year where a Senate seat and the governor’s mansion could go to different parties.
In Pennsylvania, polls show Oz and Democrat John Fetterman in close competition. But Shapiro has a double-digit lead on Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano in a race that operatives of both parties acknowledge is far more lopsided.
Mastriano worked extensively to try to overturn the 2020 election as a state lawmaker and has embraced the extremes of his party, at one point attending a conference that promoted the baseless conspiracy theories of QAnon. Tucker, who is Jewish, said he is troubled by the people Mastriano associates with and does not believe he would represent all Pennsylvanians. Mastriano drew criticism this summer for a consulting fee he paid to Gab, the far-right social media website whose CEO, Andrew Torba, has railed against Jewish people and declared his brand of right-wing politics “an explicitly Christian movement.”
Mastriano later said in a statement that Torba “doesn’t speak for me or my campaign.” Mastriano’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
While Trump has touted both Oz and Mastriano as part of a unified “Trump ticket,” the candidates have rarely appeared together. Oz “has rightly separated himself,” said David La Torre, a GOP strategist in Pennsylvania, who says he will vote for “the more moderate” candidates in the race: Oz and Shapiro. Oz’s campaign did not comment on its relationship with Mastriano’s campaign.
A new ad from the Republican group American Crossroads tells viewers that Fetterman is “way more radical” than Shapiro, effectively inviting them to be a Shapiro-Oz voters. It highlights the times that Fetterman, as lieutenant governor, voted to release someone convicted of a crime while Shapiro objected as attorney general. It doesn’t just give Fetterman a red X — it gives Shapiro a green check mark.
In focus groups, Longwell said, some swing voters who initially wrote off both Oz and Mastriano have said more recently that they will back Oz and expressed concerns about crime. Violent crime has been a major focus of GOP attack ads as Fetterman’s early polling lead over Oz has narrowed this fall.
Fetterman’s campaign has been appealing to voters across the political spectrum, airing ads with Republican supporters. On Friday, it hosted a “Republicans for Fetterman” news conference. “Every day, we’re seeing more and more Republicans coming out of the woodwork to support John,” said Fetterman campaign spokesman Joe Calvello.
In Ohio, polling shows Republican author J.D. Vance and Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan in a close Senate race, while Mike DeWine, the GOP governor, leads his Democratic opponent, former Dayton mayor Nan Whaley, by double digits. Ryan needs DeWine voters, said Robert Alexander, a political science professor at Ohio Northern University. “There’s simply no other way that he is going to be able to win this race,” he said.
Running in a state that voted twice for Trump, Ryan has consistently run ads portraying himself as a centrist who “voted with Trump on trade,” while Vance calls him a Democratic rubber-stamp.
WelcomePAC, a group supporting Ryan, is trying to reach both Trump detractors and supporters in the GOP, highlighting endorsements from current and former Republicans and arguing that Vance is “not really what he says,” said Ohio-based Democratic strategist Irene Lin, who works with the group. Once an outspoken Trump critic, Vance has aligned himself closely with the former president during his run for the Senate.
Split tickets are key to WelcomePAC’s strategy. It has targeted online advertising to people who previously voted for both DeWine and Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, according to senior project manager Hugh Jones, and also promoted an op-ed about split voting by a self-described “centrist Republican.”
One Facebook ad with nearly half a million impressions asks people to learn more about “Changing the Leadership In Our Nation One Split-Ticket At A Time.”
Luke Schroeder, a spokesman for the Vance campaign, said Vance is “proud to have the unified support of Republicans in Ohio, including endorsements from Governor DeWine and Senator [Rob] Portman.” (Portman’s decision not to seek reelection opened up the seat Vance is pursuing.) Schroeder said voters “shouldn’t be fooled” by WelcomePAC, calling it a “bogus organization” and highlighting its ties to Democrats.
When it comes to both Ohio and Pennsylvania, the spending gap in the governor’s races is far wider than in the Senate races, which some said helps explain the polling differences between the two races.
In Georgia, Warnock’s campaign is also appealing directly to crossover voters. It recently began airing an ad featuring Republicans and independents who say there is “no way” they can vote for Walker.
Polling has consistently shown Kemp leading his Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, while Walker and Warnock are in a closer race. Kemp and Warnock’s advantage as incumbents, their appeal to moderates and their opponents’ struggles could all contribute to the phenomenon of Kemp-Walker voters, strategists said.
Kemp sidestepped questions about his support for Walker earlier this month, after an ex-girlfriend said Walker once paid for her to get an abortion, despite his strict antiabortion stance as a candidate. Walker has denied the claim. Without naming Walker, Kemp told ABC News he was “working hard to help the whole ticket in this state.”
Kemp campaign spokesman Tate Mitchell said in a statement, “The governor supports and intends to vote for Herschel Walker and the entire Republican ticket.” Walker’s campaign did not have any comment beyond pointing to that statement.
Strategists said they expect party loyalty to kick in for some ticket-splitters as Election Day nears. Republicans hope the chance of electing the 51st GOP senator will persuade many voters to overlook their candidate’s controversies in Georgia, especially if the race advances to a runoff with control of the chamber hanging in the balance.
“At the end of the day, it came down to … a right or a left?” said George Dunn, 61, a Republican voter in Georgia who says he “held [his] nose” to vote twice for Trump. He said he seriously considered voting this year for Kemp but not Walker, who he worried was unqualified.
On Wednesday, however, Dunn cast his ballot for Walker — reassured by Walker’s showing in a debate, increasingly concerned about the prospect of a Democratic-controlled Senate and undeterred by the account from Walker’s ex-girlfriend.
But Dunn said he knows about 20 Republican Kemp voters who have said they will back Warnock. “I don’t believe them,” he said, predicting many would come around by Election Day.
In Wisconsin, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson has pulled ahead of his Democratic challenger, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, while the governor’s race is roughly even. Johnson’s support from Democrats clocked in at zero percent in August, according to polling from Marquette Law School, and he trailed Barnes by 15 points among independents. By October, however, he was capturing 5 percent of the Democratic vote and led by six points among independents.
The situation is flipped in Arizona, where GOP nominee Blake Masters trails Sen. Mark Kelly (D) while Republican Kari Lake is neck-and-neck with Democrat Katie Hobbs in the governor’s race.
Masters, a first-time candidate, emerged from a bitter primary with lower poll numbers than Lake — a well-known former TV anchor — even among Republicans. Strategists also noted Kelly’s advantage as an incumbent and big lead with independents, built up while distancing himself from his party. But they said the race appears to be growing tighter.
Kelly attended a parade with Hobbs but otherwise has not campaigned with her — a stark contrast with Masters and Lake, who hold frequent events together. Kelly’s and Hobbs’s campaigns did not comment.
In New Hampshire, the GOP’s Senate prospects dimmed in the eyes of many strategists after the party nominated Don Bolduc, who has flip-flopped on accepting the 2020 election results and expressed openness to abolishing the FBI. Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan led Bolduc by seven points in one recent poll. New Hampshire’s moderate Republican governor, Chris Sununu, is overwhelmingly favored to win reelection.
“Are people aware that it’s a 50-50 Senate?” said Fergus Cullen, a city council member and former state Republican Party official in New Hampshire. “… I just I don’t think that is something that is widely understood.”
The Senate Leadership Fund, a group aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), recently pulled out of the race and plans to shift resources to Pennsylvania, according to a Republican strategist familiar with the strategy, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal discussions.
Cullen said he will cast his ballot for both Sununu and Bolduc, citing his strong opposition to Hassan. Asked about his local House race, Cullen said only that he will not support GOP nominee Karoline Leavitt, a far-right former Trump staffer who has falsely called the 2020 election rigged.
Isaac Arnsdorf, Cara McGoogan, Paul Kane and Annie Linskey contributed to this report.
