Split-ticket voters could propel Gallego across finish line in Arizona

Split-ticket voters could ultimately propel Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego to the Senate in Arizona even as voters in the Grand Canyon State choose former President Trump over Vice President Harris in the presidential race.

An aggregate of Arizona surveys compiled by Decision Desk HQ shows Trump — who won the state in 2016 before narrowly losing it in 2020 — just edging past Harris at roughly 49 percent to 48 percent. Yet a DDHQ aggregate shows Gallego more comfortably leading Senate GOP challenger Kari Lake at 50 percent to 42 percent.

Though both races are expected to be close, the strong possibility of split-ticket voting in the state underscores the unexpected and dynamic nature of Arizona politics.

The presidential race is “certainly a lot closer than the Senate race. I think Gallego has a pretty sizable and handy lead in the … Senate race,” said Paul Bentz, senior vice president of research and strategy at the Phoenix-based HighGround, Inc. “Whereas the presidential race is up in the air — I think it’s within the margin.”

Arizona is likely to play a pivotal role in determining who takes the White House and controls the Senate this fall. The Grand Canyon State voted for Trump by more than 3 percentage points in 2016, then narrowly voted for President Biden by just over a quarter of a percentage point in 2020 — becoming one of the states where election denialism ran rampant in the process.

Split-ticket voting, in which voters cast ballots for candidates of different party affiliations, has become increasingly infrequent amid a hyperpolarized political environment.

Casey Burgat, the legislative affairs program director at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management, noted in a Substack post last month that “the 2020 election gave us a 70-year low in the number of districts that voted for one party’s presidential candidate while supporting the other party for their House Representative.”

“The trend is suggesting in 2024 we may even set a new record in the amount of split ticket votes we have — or more accurately — that we don't have,” he noted in his video.

Yet split-ticket voting in Arizona still persists. One prime example was the 2018 election, where voters elected both Republican Doug Ducey for governor and then-Democrat Kyrsten Sinema for senator.

Arizona’s 1st and 6th Congressional Districts are also emblematic of split-ticket voting. Both districts narrowly voted for Biden in 2020 but are represented by GOP Reps. David Schweikert and Juan Ciscomani, respectively.

Recent polling has shown that split-ticket voting could very likely present itself again this cycle.

Some strategists believe Lake has been underperforming Trump because the former local news anchor has largely run a similar campaign to the one she ran in 2022.

“I don't think she's ever properly reintroduced herself. I think she assumes everyone knows her from her governor's race,” Bentz noted.

“I think she struggled to raise money, but she hasn't really sort of reframed herself in any sort of real way about what makes this run different. And so it seems sort of like a retread, whereas they've given Gallego a ton of leeway to introduce himself to set sort of his positions,” he added.

Though Lake has been able to raise more money in the last quarter compared to some of her other Senate GOP contenders, there’s been a clear disparity between how much she and Gallego have raised.

“I think in Arizona, and you look at the last, you know, three Senate races, and candidate quality on the Republican side has been an issue, and you're seeing it again with Kari Lake,” said Max Fose, who has been involved in campaign efforts for Sinema and the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

“So that's what I think the separation between Donald Trump and Kari Lake is, is just candidate quality and likability,” he said.

Yet some members of the party believe their base will ultimately come home.

“I don't think that there's going to be widespread defections,” Jon Seaton, a Republican strategist who advised a gubernatorial rival of Lake’s in 2022 noted, mentioning that Lake was running a “more disciplined” campaign.

Lake, for her part, has brushed off public polling, telling NBC News in an interview aired on Wednesday that voter shouldn’t trust it.

“Polling is much like what we saw in 2016 — polling that’s meant to move the voter into doing something. I know what our internal polling looks like. It’s great,” Lake said. “I talked to door-knockers who are knocking for independent groups, who are knocking for Republican groups. The response people are getting at the door is overwhelming.”

Her team also offered a “Path to Victory” press release last month that suggested that split-ticketing was rare during a presidential cycle. The memo noted that in 68 out of 69 Senate races that took place in 2016 and 2020, only one state voted for a presidential candidate and Senate candidate of different parties.

One national Republican strategist who requested anonymity to speak candidly pushed back against the idea that candidate quality, likeability issues or the kind of campaign she was running were factors in why Lake was underperforming Trump in polls.

“Since her primary, Kari Lake has placed a significant focus on reaching out to Republican voters, unifying Republican leaders across the state. You've seen people like Karrin Taylor Robson, Doug Ducey have endorsed her campaign,” the strategist said, referring to a former gubernatorial rival of hers. “And meanwhile, you've seen Gallego fully embracing … Harris-Walz and the Biden-Harris agenda.”

On the presidential level, some Republican strategists think Trump might have a narrow edge because of the repeated attacks against Harris or simply the issues looming over the race, like border security and immigration and the economy.

“We can have a debate about the extent to which Kamala Harris is responsible for the crisis at the border,” Seaton said. “But what we can't have a debate about is that she is a part of the Democratic administration that currently is in charge and the border is not secure.”

A Team Trump Arizona spokesperson pointed to those issues, among others, as well as Trump’s track record, as reason for projecting confidence over the race.

“We know President Trump is winning in the state because of his successful track record and the fact that Arizonans trust President Trump over failed Kamala Harris on issues such as the border, immigration, and the economy,” the spokesperson said.

Other issues, however, are also looming over the state, including the economy, threats to democracy and abortion. Voters are expected to weigh in on a constitutional amendment that would enshrine abortion protections into the state constitution, which could juice up turnout among Democrats.

While Jacques Petit, Harris-Walz communications director for Arizona, noted to The Hill in a statement that the vice president was the “underdog,” he suggested they were running the right operation on the ground to deliver a victory.

“Our campaign has the infrastructure on the ground to reach voters in every corner of Arizona and is building a broad coalition of Democrats, Republicans and Independents who support Vice President Harris’s new way forward and are ready to turn the page on Donald Trump, Kari Lake, and their extreme Project 2025 agenda to ban abortion and drag Arizonans into the past,” Petit said.

Some Democrats say they’re skeptical of the idea that Harris might be narrowly trailing Trump in the state. DJ Quinlan, a former executive director of the Arizona Democratic Party, noted the polls at this point are “going to be very noisy.”

“I think if anything … I would give a slight edge to Harris, because they have built out a field infrastructure that is very, very strong, and they're knocking on tens of thousands of doors, making hundreds of thousands of phone calls,” Quinlan said.