Biden’s Polling Decline Opens Opportunities for Split-Ticket Voting in Key Senate Races

Democratic Senate candidates in critical swing states are running well ahead of President Joe Biden and lead their Republican rivals, but Pennsylvania Senate Republican candidate Dave McCormick believes he’s got a plan to ensure the commonwealth turns red for both himself and former President Donald Trump.

“Bob Casey has been the status quo; he’s voted with Biden 98% of the time,” McCormick said, speaking to the Washington Examiner in an interview. “I’ve made huge progress on people getting to know me and that is being reflected in the polls.”

McCormick’s strategy: tie incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) to Biden as much as possible, capitalizing on the president’s sinking job approval ratings in the Keystone State over inflation and the border crisis.

The wealthy finance executive and veteran is working to erase Casey’s advantage as a three-term senator whose father was a governor of Pennsylvania. Casey regularly outpolls Biden in the state, where Democrats have enjoyed victory since Trump’s stunning upset over Hillary Clinton in 2016.

“[Casey] has not had any major legislative accomplishments, and people are deeply worried about the future of the country,” McCormick explained. “I think that lays the groundwork for an outsider who has had my background of experience in the military, in business, and so forth.”

McCormick trails his Democratic incumbent challenger in averages of recent polling. In fact, a recent battleground state Siena College poll released last week found Democratic Senate candidates in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin are leading their Republican opponents and are running ahead of Biden in critical states that could determine the outcome of the 2024 election.

The results found Casey has the support of 46% of voters, compared to McCormick’s 41%. However, former Trump holds a slim advantage in a head-to-head race with Biden, 47% to 44%.

The mismatched polling suggests there’s a potential for split-ticket voting that could be beneficial to Democrats in places like Pennsylvania where races are won and lost by mere thousands of votes and could have the impact of tipping the races for Senate and the presidency.

“Democrats would much, much, much prefer a popular president of the same party running for president. The coattails are very beneficial because we filter everything so much through a presidential lens,” Casey Burgat, the director of the Legislative Affairs Program at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management, said.

“They are seeing an unpopular president as more of an obstacle, and we will see this reflected in their campaigns a little bit where they will try to distance themselves from the president where appropriate and they won’t tie themselves directly to the Biden agenda,” Burgat explained.

McCormick is framing the polling and recent trends as promising because it showed he was within striking distance of Casey, especially when considering the margins of error.

“I think where I am in the polls is terrific. In the following sense, only about 50% of Pennsylvanians know who I am,” McCormick said. “For me to be where I am in the polls and for this race to be margin of error at this point, I think it’s a reflection of just how weak President Biden and Bob Casey are.”

Democrats face an uphill battle to keep their slim majority in the Senate this year. They are defending seats in nearly a half-dozen swing states, with a 51-49 current majority in the chamber. Republicans, meanwhile, are defending two at most, in Texas and Florida, though both lean more toward Republicans. The path is even further complicated by the likelihood that the GOP will secure at least one more seat in West Virginia since incumbent Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) opted not to run for another term in the red state.

A recent poll out of Arizona conducted by YouGov, shows likely Democratic nominee Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) leads likely Republican nominee Kari Lake by double digits. Forty-nine percent of respondents said they plan to back Gallego in November, while 36% said they expect they will be voting for Lake, according to the survey. However, the poll found Republicans are still leading in the presidential race with 52% of respondents answering they are voting for Trump, while 47% said they plan to vote for Biden.

“I do think Gallego is likely to do better than Biden, but it’s probably not going to be 18 points, so I would like a vote share instead of margin,” Kyle Kondik, a managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, said.

Experts point out that ticket-splitting has declined substantially in recent years, with the country remaining deeply divided as many people gravitate toward their partisan corners.

“The general trend has been the past two presidential elections, only one Senate race in either year produced a split outcome, Susan Collins won in Maine, while Biden won Maine in 2020,” Kondik explained. “Prior to that it was pretty common for there to be split results in Senate races, Democrats won several Romney state Senate races in 2012 with incumbents, they even held an open seat with Heidi Heitkamp in 2012.”

There were some signs of ticket-splitters in the 2022 midterm elections, but the examples are limited. In New Hampshire, Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH) won with 57% of the vote, while incumbent Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) beat out a Republican opponent by nearly double digits. In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) won his race against Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams by about 8 points, while Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker was defeated by Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) narrowly.

“Just because the trend has been toward less ticket splitting doesn’t mean there will be no ticket splitting this election,” Kondik explained. “We should be open-minded about the possibility of there being more in 2024.”

Instead of split-ticket voting, Burgat believes there is more likely to be gaps between the Biden performance and the Senate candidate performance because voters opt to not to participate in the presidential race or vote for a third-party candidate.

“It’s not split-ticket voting,” Burgat said. “There are going to be states where Democratic senator wins by a much larger percentage than Biden carries that state. Conversely, you’re going to see Democratic Senate candidates lose by less than what Biden lost that state.”

As for McCormick, he’s been hitting the campaign trail for the last six months, preparing to complete his 67-county tour of the state this Friday with a stop in Pike County.

“I’m running a retail campaign, and I’m spending a lot of time across our commonwealth. I’ve got this campaign bus,” McCormick said.

The Republican hopeful admits the state is set to be one of the most expensive and premiere battles this cycle.

“We get more and more attention every day. I say to people on the campaign trail with a laugh, ‘By the time this thing is over, you’re going to be so sick of seeing my face,’” he said.

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“I am delighted with where I am in the polls,” he added. “I think we are running a great campaign, and evidence shows as Pennsylvanians get to know me, they will come to me.”

The Washington Examiner reached out to Casey’s campaign for comment.