In the 2022 midterm elections, former President Donald J. Trump endorsed dozens of candidates down the ballot, positioning himself as Republicans’ undisputed kingmaker.
But in the competitive races critical to his party’s hopes of regaining control of the Senate, his picks all fell short — leaving the chamber in the hands of Democrats.
This year, even with Mr. Trump himself on the ticket, the Senate candidates he has backed to flip the seats of Democrats in key battlegrounds are running well behind him, according to recent New York Times and Siena College polling.
Across five states with competitive Senate races — Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan — an average of 7 percent of likely voters who plan to support Mr. Trump for president also said they planned to cast a ballot for a Democrat in their state’s Senate race.
Arizona has the highest share of voters who intended to split their tickets: Ten percent of Mr. Trump’s supporters said they would vote for Representative Ruben Gallego in the race for the state’s open Senate seat.
While the dynamics are not identical, many of the races feature long-serving Democratic senators who have been able to chart a moderate course, even as Mr. Trump and his brand of politics won support in the state.
These ticket splitters are largely Republican-leaning, and a majority — 62 percent — said they supported Mr. Trump in the 2020 election.
Mostly younger and less educated than the electorate overall, these voters tend to hold more moderate views, despite their leaning toward Republicans. More than two-thirds of G.O.P. ticket-splitters said they wanted abortion to be legal, nearly double the share of Republicans planning to vote a straight ticket who said the same. They were also more likely than Republicans who plan to vote a straight ticket to say that society should accept transgender people as having the gender with which they identify, and that immigrants strengthen our society.
There is a bright spot for Mr. Trump and Republicans in the race for control of the Senate, though, in Montana (not included in this poll). Recent polls have found that Tim Sheehy, the Republican, is running ahead of his opponent, Senator Jon Tester, which would give Republicans the advantage in taking control of the chamber.
Ticket splitting is increasingly rare in this hyper-polarized political era, but its relative prevalence in these states is a sign not just of the potential weakness of Republican Senate candidates, but of the strength of Democratic candidates.
In Arizona, Mr. Gallego has been lifted past his Republican rival, Kari Lake, a close Trump ally, by ticket splitters who are disproportionately young and Latino.
Javier Rodriguez said he had voted for Democrats his whole life and was considering supporting Mr. Gallego for Senate in Arizona, but Mr. Trump for president.
“I’m Mexican American and I always vote for my own, which is why I’m considering supporting Gallego,” said Mr. Rodriguez, 42, of Maricopa. “But it takes a special person like Trump to get me to vote against my own.”
Mr. Rodriguez said higher prices and crime were the issues driving his support for Mr. Trump.
In Ohio, Senator Sherrod Brown is leading in a hard-fought race against the Republican, Bernie Moreno, partly because of women voters, who are more than twice as likely as men to be ticket splitters in the state.
“I am a Republican, I think that the policies of the Trump administration were good for our country,” said Kathleen Eagan, 42, of Cincinnati. “But I also think Senator Brown has done a great job for Ohio and did a great job working across the aisle.”
Ms. Eagan said she intended to split her ticket.
“We are a rare group, but I know quite a few people in Ohio who fall into this camp,” she said.
Mr. Brown is banking on that to win in a state where Mr. Trump won by eight percentage points in 2020. (Mr. Moreno recently came under fire for disparaging comments he made about suburban women and women over the age of 50 over their concern about abortion rights — remarks that the Brown campaign has seized upon.)
In Pennsylvania, Senator Bob Casey, who has served three terms and comes from a prominent political family in the state, is drawing support from white working-class voters who also support Mr. Trump, a crucial demographic in the state. Mr. Casey has seen openings to attack his Republican opponent, Dave McCormick, on his vast personal wealth — he was a chief executive of one of the world’s largest hedge funds — and his ties to the state.
Roughly 3 percent of supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris said they intended to split their tickets and support a Republican candidate for Senate. This is more in line with historical rates of ticket splitting.
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