Ticket Splitting

Ticket splitting is a term that is used to describe voting for different parties when voters are provided with the opportunity to cast more than one vote at a time. By contrast, voters who vote for only one party are said to cast a straight-ticket. This definition applies to voting behavior in various institutional settings. Voters can cast split tickets when they are asked to elect different offices. Voting for a Republican candidate in an American presidential election while voting for a Democrat in the House contest is a case in point. Citizens can also cast split tickets when voting for only one institution. For example, in German federal parliamentary elections voters are asked to cast two votes that they are allowed to cast for different parties. For a long time, intra-institutional ticket splitting was unique to Germany. Yet, in recent years, a considerable number of countries, including Hungary, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea, and the Ukraine, adopted two-vote systems for elections to legislative assemblies.

[Page 791]Depending on the institutional setting, ticket splitting has considerable political consequences. As regards intra-institutional ticket splitting, split tickets can influence the partisan composition of parliament and thereby turn the partisan balance. Inter-institutional ticket splitting can cause divided partisan control over institutions. If many Americans, for instance, vote for the Republican candidate in the presidential election while casting their House votes for Democratic candidates, a Republican president and a predominantly Democratic House could result. As far as these institutions jointly decide about policy-making, this pattern of divided government requires different parties to compromise about policies. Thus, divided government can render a system of checks and balances to be more effective, but it can also cause gridlock.

Regardless of the institutional setting, only a minority of voters engage in ticket splitting. In the United States, the extent of ticket splitting between presidential and congressional votes increased from roughly 10% in 1952 to about 30% in 1972, but it then declined again to about 15% in 2004. Intrainstitutional ticket splitting is also not common. In New Zealand, for instance, the share of split tickets dropped from about 39% in 1996 and 2002 to about 29% in 2005, although in Germany, ticket splitting in federal elections rose from roughly 5% in the late 1950s to almost 25% in 2005.

A large and rapidly growing amount of literature has proposed various explanations for ticket splitting. A traditional account considers voters to cast split tickets because they prefer (candidates of) different parties when it comes to casting more than one vote. This model of sincere or affective ticket splitting appears in various guises. Scholars argue that a lack of strong partisan attachments increases the likelihood of casting split tickets as political independents are more likely to prefer (candidates of) different parties. Divided partisan preferences may be fueled by lopsided campaigns. For instance, to explain ticket splitting between presidential and congressional candidates in the United States, scholars rely on congressional incumbents' advantage in resources and visibility that allows them to secure reelection, irrespective of partisan ebbs and flows at the presidential level. Alternatively, divided partisan preferences may result from voters relying on different criteria when deciding whom to vote for. For instance, Jacobson argues that Americans suppose presidents to provide national goods like peace and prosperity, whereas they expect members of Congress to concentrate on providing benefits for their districts. Likewise, under the German two-vote system, a voter may refer to national policies when deciding for which party to cast his or her party vote while judging local candidates in terms of personal appeal.

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