Ticket-splitters will shape Senate race

Republicans have trailed in the both the U.S. Senate and presidential races in every independent poll in Wisconsin this year.

For incumbent GOP Sen. Ron Johnson, that’s bad news on several counts.

First, it’s unusual to win after running perpetually behind in the polls.

Second, if Hillary Clinton holds her lead over Donald Trump, Johnson would have to outperform Trump by a large enough margin to produce a rare “split outcome” in Wisconsin — where voters choose one party for president and the other for Senate.

Third, not a single public survey this year has produced a split outcome. In every one, Democrats have been ahead in both contests.

That doesn’t make it impossible for Johnson to overcome a Trump loss in Wisconsin and defeat Democratic challenger Russ Feingold.

It just makes Johnson — and several other Senate Republicans in tough races around the country — dependent on an outbreak of ticket-splitting in the event their party loses the presidential race in their states.

What are the chances of that happening?

The prospects are good for a rise in ticket-splitting after years of decline.

“There’s no doubt in my mind split-ticket voting will be higher in this election than 2012 and 2008,” says University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Dave Canon, who points to the number of voters in both parties who have qualms about their nominees, as well as the potential size of the third party presidential vote for Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

But it’s far less clear which Senate candidate — Johnson or Feingold — will be helped by that.

To test that question, pollster Charles Franklin combined the last three surveys by the Marquette University Law School (early August, late August and mid-September) to see how many voters in Wisconsin were splitting their tickets for Senate and president, and which Senate candidate was benefiting.

Here is how the 2,410 registered voters in these polls broke down:

• 36.6% supported both Democrats, Clinton and Feingold.
• 30.3% supported both Republicans, Trump and Johnson.
• 3.9% supported Trump for president and Feingold for Senate.
• 3.7% supported Clinton for president and Johnson for Senate.
• 6.2% were undecided for president and supported Feingold for Senate.
• 7.4% were undecided for president and supported Johnson for Senate.
• 11% were undecided for Senate.

In sum, ticket-splitting did not favor either Senate candidate in these polls.

The numbers “look awfully symmetrical,” said Franklin. There was roughly the same number of Trump-Feingold voters as Clinton-Johnson voters.  And voters undecided for president were split almost evenly between Feingold and Johnson.

If Johnson were getting a boost right now from split-ticket voters, you also would expect to see him outperforming his party’s presidential candidate in Wisconsin.

But that hasn’t happened in the public polling so far.

In the polling averages compiled by the website Real Clear Politics, Johnson faces a bigger deficit (10 points) in Wisconsin against Feingold than Trump faces against Clinton (5 points).

In polling by Marquette, the two contests don’t differ very much: the Senate race has been closer in some surveys, the presidential race in others. Trump trailed Clinton by 2 among likely voters in Marquette’s most recent poll (Sept. 15-18), while Johnson trailed Feingold by 6.

How are other GOP Senate candidates in contested races around the country performing compared to Trump?

It’s a very mixed bag, says Canon.

Some are running ahead of Trump in their states, such as Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte.

Others are running well behind him, such as Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt and Todd Young of Indiana.

And some fall somewhere in between, such as Johnson.

The first Johnson-Feingold race six years ago exemplified a long-term national decline in ticket-splitting: only 7% of voters split their tickets between the contests for Senate and governor, compared to more than 20% who did so in some elections in the 1980s and 1990s.

Only 6% split their tickets in Wisconsin for Senate and president in 2012.

The liabilities of Trump and Clinton and the impact of third-party candidates all but ensure that number will go up this year.  And the Marquette polls point to some interesting differences between the two races.

Johnson is losing female voters by a smaller margin than Trump, but Trump is winning male voters by a bigger margin than Johnson.

Johnson is outperforming Trump in southeast Wisconsin, the GOP’s geographic base, where Trump got clobbered in the April presidential primary. Johnson has been running around 30 points ahead of Feingold in the GOP bastion of Waukesha County, while Trump’s lead over Clinton there is only half that size. Johnson is losing the Democratic city of Milwaukee by a smaller margin than Trump.

But Trump has been outperforming Johnson in much of northern Wisconsin.

If Johnson could find a way to piggyback on Trump’s strength up north while overcoming Trump’s weakness in the southeastern suburbs, he could conceivably survive a Trump loss at the top of the ticket. His campaign believes he will outperform Trump.

But the public polls aren’t showing that right now.

If both races are closely decided, then a split outcome becomes more plausible (where the race for president goes to one party and the race for Senate goes to the other).

But it would require a change in the current campaign dynamics, if the polls are accurate.

It also would mean a break from historical patterns here.

The last time in this state that two different parties won these two offices was 1968, when Wisconsin re-elected Democrat Gaylord Nelson to the Senate while voting for Republican Richard Nixon for president.