WASHINGTON — Voters in Wisconsin are untethered: When they register to vote, they are not required to choose a party. That freedom allows voters to cast a ballot in either party’s primary and has resulted in a significant amount of ticket splitting in general elections.
“It's such a purple state, people kind of like the idea of some balance,” said Geoffrey Peterson, chair of the political science department at UW-Eau Claire.
In a time of increased partisanship, ticket splitting has become increasingly less common in recent years, both in Wisconsin and nationally.
“As people have started to move towards the parties they feel more comfortable with, that makes them less likely to ticket split,” Peterson said.
Mordecai Lee, professor emeritus at UW-Milwaukee, added, “In other words, we're not immune to what's been going on around the country.”
But Wisconsin is such a divided state that ticket splitting is significant enough to spell the difference in some elections.
Two years ago, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., won re-election the same year that Democrat Gov. Tony Evers did. And it is possible former President Donald Trump and Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., could both win the state this year, even though Baldwin is running against Republican businessman Eric Hovde, who has aligned himself with Trump.
“If the Baldwin ticket splitting is pretty narrow, then Harris' probabilities of winning go up pretty dramatically,” Peterson said. “The greater the ticket splitting gets, I think the better Trump's chances are.”
Though several other states don’t make voters choose Red or Blue, Lee said enough Wisconsin voters still ticket split to make a difference.
“There aren't very many of them,” he said. “I'd guess maybe about 25,000, maybe 30,000. It's really nothing in terms of three million voters, but it's everything in terms of winning Wisconsin.”
The presidential election in Wisconsin was won by about 20,000 votes in 2016 and 2020. All signs point to it being another close race this year, for the White House and the Senate.