Ticket-Splitting: Aggregate Measures Vs. Actual Ballots

F OR SOME DECADES now, political scientists have investigated the influence of various motivational, behavioral, and institutional variables on voting behavior. More recently, the phenomenon of ticket-splitting has captured the attention not only of political scientists but of political practitioners and journalists as well. Ticket-splitting refers to the behavior of individual voters; it generally is taken to mean the act of casting votes for candidates representing more than one political party on a single ballot. The study of split-ticket voting, however, has been confined to the use of indirect measures, primarily survey and aggregate data, because of the unavailability of actual ballots. This study, however, utilizes actual ballots.