Electoral Choice in the American States: Incumbency Effects, Partisan Forces, and Divergent Partisan Majorities

It is a relatively common occurrence in American politics for state electorates to divide their partisan majorities between different parties, depending on the office contest. Observations concerning these divergent aggregate patterns are usually accompanied by speculation that the theoretical propositions on individual voting behavior, developed and tested in the context of presidential voting, hold less relevance for voting in statewide contests. Evidence presented in this paper does not bear out that view of state elections. The candidate incumbency context of state elections is introduced as an aid in predicting the partisan direction of split-ticket voting at the state level. Setting respondents in various conflict situations with respect to (1) basic party loyalties, (2) net assessments of presidential candidates, and (3) incumbent partisanship yields reasonably accurate specification of split-ticket voting patterns in gubernatorial, senatorial, and presidential contests; it also suggests at least one source of disparate partisan majorities among state electorates.