Wikipedia Deep Dive

Split-ticket voting

13 min read

In Ghana, they call it "skirt-and-blouse voting." The phrase captures something wonderfully subversive: the idea that a voter might deliberately mix and match their political outfit, choosing a president from one party while selecting a parliamentarian from another, the way someone might pair a formal skirt with a casual blouse to create something entirely their own.

This colorful term describes what political scientists more dryly call "split-ticket voting" — the practice of voting for candidates from different political parties when multiple offices appear on the same ballot. It's the opposite of "straight-ticket voting," where a voter marches down the ballot checking boxes for a single party all the way through, from president to county coroner.

The phenomenon tells us something profound about democracy itself. When voters split their tickets, they're essentially saying: "I refuse to be a rubber stamp. I'm evaluating each race on its own merits." It's democracy at its most deliberate, even if it occasionally produces governments that struggle to function.

The Architecture of Choice

Not every democracy even allows split-ticket voting. The possibility depends entirely on how a country structures its ballots.

In places like Argentina, Israel, South Africa, and Spain, voters cast their ballots for party lists rather than individual candidates. You pick a party, and that party decides who fills the various positions based on where names fall on their predetermined list. There's no ticket to split because there's only one choice to make. It's efficient, certainly, but it removes a certain granularity of control from the voter's hands.

Countries that use mixed electoral systems — hybrids that combine different voting methods — often create the most interesting opportunities for ticket-splitting. The United Kingdom, for instance, uses something called the Additional Member System for its devolved assemblies in Scotland, Wales, and London. Voters cast two separate votes: one for a specific candidate in their local constituency, and another for a party list covering a broader region. Between 1997 and 2003, somewhere between seventeen and twenty-eight percent of voters in these elections chose to split their tickets, selecting different parties for their two votes.

Why would someone do this? The reasons vary enormously.

The Art of Strategic Voting

Some voters split their tickets as a deliberate balancing act. They want divided government. If they suspect Party A will win the presidency, they might vote for Party B's candidate for the legislature, hoping to create a system of checks where neither side can run roughshod over the other.

Australia offers a fascinating case study in strategic ticket-splitting. Federal elections there typically happen on the same day for both the House of Representatives and the Senate, but the two chambers work quite differently. A candidate needs to win fifty percent of the vote to take a House seat, but only about fourteen percent to claim a Senate seat. This mathematical reality encourages voters to support major parties in the House, where minor parties have almost no chance, while throwing their Senate votes to smaller parties that can actually win seats there.

The Australian Democrats built an entire political identity around this dynamic. From 1978 to 2008, the Democrats held Senate seats while barely registering in House elections. Their campaign slogan? "Keeping the bastards honest." The message was explicit: vote for the major parties to run the government, but vote for us to make sure they don't abuse their power. It was a pitch for the value of divided government, and for three decades, Australian voters bought it.

When Candidates Matter More Than Parties

Sometimes ticket-splitting isn't strategic at all. Sometimes a voter simply likes one candidate more than another, regardless of party affiliation.

This was relatively rare in American politics before the 1950s. In the 1948 elections, only six states split their tickets between presidential and senatorial races. Voters tended to think of themselves as Democrats or Republicans first, and they voted accordingly.

Then came television.

The rise of broadcast media fundamentally changed how Americans experienced their candidates. Suddenly, elections became less about party platforms and more about personal appeal, charisma, and that ineffable quality called "presence." Voters began evaluating candidates as individuals, forming opinions based on how they came across on screen rather than simply checking which party they belonged to.

By the late 1960s, split-ticket voting had become common. The 1968 presidential election illustrated this perfectly: Richard Nixon won the presidency for the Republicans while Democrats maintained a fifty-one seat majority in the House of Representatives. Four years later, Nixon won one of the largest landslide victories in American history — and Democrats still held the House by fifty seats. American voters had learned to distinguish between presidential politics and congressional politics, often reaching very different conclusions about each.

The Reagan Revolution and Its Contradictions

The peak of American ticket-splitting came during the 1980s, and the contradictions were remarkable.

Ronald Reagan swept into office in 1980 promising a conservative revolution. He won reelection in 1984 by carrying forty-nine of fifty states. His vice president, George H.W. Bush, won the presidency in 1988 by a comfortable margin. Republicans dominated presidential politics for an entire decade.

Yet throughout this era of Republican presidential dominance, Democrats controlled the House of Representatives. For all ten years. Not once did Republicans manage to flip the chamber. From 1987 to 1989, Democrats even controlled the Senate.

What were American voters thinking? The best explanation is that they wanted Reagan's vision of strong national defense and lower taxes applied to the executive branch, while preferring Democratic approaches to the domestic programs they encountered in their daily lives — Social Security, Medicare, education funding. They wanted both parties in power simultaneously, each doing what they believed it did best.

This wasn't cognitive dissonance. It was sophisticated consumer behavior applied to politics.

The Decline of the Split Ticket

Something changed in the twenty-first century. Split-ticket voting, once a normal feature of American elections, became increasingly rare.

The numbers are striking. In 2004, only seven states split their tickets between presidential and senatorial races. By 2016 and 2020, that number had dropped to just one: Maine, where Republican Susan Collins managed to win reelection to the Senate even as Joe Biden carried the state in the presidential race.

Political scientists track something called "crossover districts" — congressional districts that vote for a presidential candidate from one party and a House candidate from another. In 2008, there were eighty-three such districts. By 2020, there were only sixteen, representing just four percent of all congressional districts. A record low.

What happened?

The short answer is polarization. American politics became increasingly tribal. Members of each party began viewing the opposition not merely as people with different policy preferences, but as existential threats to the country. In this environment, voting for any candidate from the other party — regardless of their individual qualifications — came to feel like betrayal.

The nationalization of politics reinforced this trend. Local races increasingly became referendums on national issues and national figures. A congressional candidate's personal qualities mattered less than whether they had a D or an R next to their name. The very conditions that had made split-ticket voting possible — voters evaluating candidates as individuals — were eroding.

The Quality Exception

And yet ticket-splitting hasn't disappeared entirely. The 2022 elections demonstrated that candidate quality can still override partisan loyalty, at least in some circumstances.

Georgia provided the clearest example. Republican Brian Kemp, the incumbent governor, defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams by seven percentage points. But on the same ballot, Republican Herschel Walker lost the Senate race to Democrat Raphael Warnock. The same Georgia voters who chose a Republican governor chose a Democratic senator.

Walker's campaign had been plagued by revelations about his personal life, questions about his qualifications, and a series of bizarre public statements. Kemp, by contrast, had governed competently and maintained a professional demeanor. Georgia voters could see the difference and voted accordingly, even though it meant splitting their tickets.

Ohio told a similar story. Governor Mike DeWine won reelection by twenty-six percentage points. Senate candidate J.D. Vance won his race by less than seven points. Same party, same ballot, vastly different margins. DeWine was a known quantity with a record of moderate governance. Vance was a newcomer with a more ideological edge. Voters noticed.

The 2024 elections reinforced this pattern. In North Carolina, Democrat Josh Stein won the governor's race by a landslide even as Republican Donald Trump carried the state for president. The difference? Stein's opponent, Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, had been engulfed in scandals that made Walker's troubles look mild by comparison. North Carolina voters proved willing to split their tickets when one candidate was simply too damaged to support.

The Philippine Experiment

Perhaps no democracy has experienced split-ticket voting as dramatically as the Philippines, where the president and vice president are elected separately rather than as a ticket.

The results have been consistently chaotic. From 1987 through 2022, the president and vice president came from different parties in three out of four elections. Imagine if the United States had elected Barack Obama as president and Mitt Romney as vice president in 2012. Now imagine that happening repeatedly, as a normal feature of democratic life.

The 1998 election paired Joseph Estrada of the LAMMP coalition with Gloria Macapagal Arroyo from the opposing Lakas party. When Estrada was later forced from office amid corruption allegations, Arroyo — his political opponent — became president. The system had created its own checks and balances, though not necessarily the kind anyone would design intentionally.

Filipino political observers generally view this arrangement as undesirable. Having a president and vice president working against each other complicates governance and creates uncertainty about succession. But voters keep splitting their tickets anyway, perhaps because they distrust concentrated power, perhaps because they're genuinely torn between candidates, perhaps simply because the ballot gives them the option and they can't resist using it.

Indonesia and the Limits of Party Loyalty

The 2024 Indonesian general election provided another window into the complexity of voter behavior. In Central Java and Bali — traditional strongholds of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, known by its Indonesian acronym PDIP — the party won the most votes in legislative elections. But the PDIP's presidential candidate lost both provinces.

Indonesian voters supported PDIP for their local representatives while rejecting the party's choice for president. They liked the party but not its presidential nominee. Or perhaps they liked a different presidential candidate more. Either way, they demonstrated that party loyalty has limits, that voters can distinguish between different levels of government and make different choices for each.

The eventual winner, Prabowo Subianto, carried thirty-six of thirty-eight provinces. His coalition had clearly assembled broader support than any single party. Indonesian voters were building their government à la carte.

The Italian Exception

Not every country tolerates ticket-splitting, and Italy has taken an unusual approach: banning it outright in national elections since 2017.

The prohibition reflects Italy's tumultuous electoral history. The country has experimented with numerous voting systems over the decades, trying to balance proportional representation with stable governance. Allowing voters to split tickets, Italian lawmakers concluded, created too much chaos.

Some Italian regions still permit the practice, however, leading to occasional accusations of strategic ticket-splitting. In the 2024 Sardinian regional election, the center-right candidate received forty-five percent of the vote while his supporting parties collectively won forty-eight percent. Some observers blamed the right-wing Lega party for ticket-splitting — voting for their allied gubernatorial candidate while supporting Lega candidates for the regional legislature. Whether this represented intentional strategy or genuine voter preference remained unclear.

What Ticket-Splitting Reveals

The prevalence of split-ticket voting in a democracy tells us something important about the health of that democracy's political culture.

High levels of ticket-splitting suggest voters are thinking independently, evaluating candidates on their merits, and making nuanced choices. They're engaging with democracy as consumers rather than as tribal members. This can produce better governance, as individual candidates face pressure to earn votes rather than simply riding their party's coattails.

But ticket-splitting can also produce divided governments that struggle to accomplish anything. When voters deliberately split power between parties, they may be consciously choosing gridlock. Perhaps they want that — perhaps they prefer a government that moves slowly and cautiously to one that acts decisively. But they should understand they're making that choice.

Low levels of ticket-splitting, by contrast, suggest a more partisan electorate, one where party identity dominates all other considerations. This can produce more unified governments capable of implementing coherent programs. But it can also produce governments with no effective check on their power, and electorates so divided that they view compromise as betrayal.

The American trajectory from the 1960s to the 2020s illustrates both possibilities. The era of widespread ticket-splitting produced divided governments that sometimes struggled to act but also prevented the worst excesses of either party. The current era of partisan loyalty produces more unified governments but also deeper divisions between Americans who increasingly view each other as enemies rather than fellow citizens.

The Future of the Split Ticket

Will ticket-splitting make a comeback? The answer likely depends on whether voters begin evaluating candidates as individuals again rather than simply as representatives of their parties.

The 2022 and 2024 elections offer some hope. When candidates like Herschel Walker and Mark Robinson proved too flawed to support, voters demonstrated they could still split their tickets. Quality matters, at least at the margins. A sufficiently bad candidate can lose even in favorable territory; a sufficiently good candidate can win even when their party is unpopular.

But these exceptions required truly exceptional circumstances — candidates so damaged that even partisan voters couldn't stomach supporting them. The baseline level of ticket-splitting remains near historic lows. For most races, most voters still vote the party line.

Perhaps this is simply the new normal. Perhaps American politics has permanently sorted itself into two camps that will vote for their side regardless of candidate quality. The 1980s, when voters cheerfully elected Reagan while maintaining Democratic congressional majorities, might represent an anomaly rather than a standard.

Or perhaps a new generation of voters, exhausted by partisan warfare, will rediscover the appeal of evaluating candidates individually. They might look at Ghana's "skirt-and-blouse" voters and find something admirable in the willingness to mix and match, to refuse the prepackaged options, to insist on assembling their own political outfit one piece at a time.

Democracy, after all, is ultimately about choice. And the split ticket represents choice in its purest form — the voter standing in the booth, looking at a list of names, and deciding to ignore the party labels entirely. To vote not as a Democrat or Republican, not as a Labour supporter or Tory, but simply as a citizen trying to pick the best person for each job.

It's harder than voting a straight ticket. It requires paying attention to multiple races, evaluating multiple candidates, making multiple decisions. But it's also, in its way, more democratic. Each vote becomes a genuine choice rather than a foregone conclusion. Each candidate must earn support rather than assuming it.

The split ticket is democracy with the training wheels off. And watching how different countries handle it — embracing it, banning it, building entire party strategies around it — reveals something essential about how different societies think about political power, individual choice, and the proper relationship between voters and the politicians who claim to represent them.