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The Swing States 2024: Split Tickets and the Disappearing Biden Voters [1]

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Date: 2024-11-30  

With almost all votes counted, it’s possible now to start legitimately analyzing what occurred on election day (and to correct earlier hot takes made in haste and without full information). There will still be a lot to learn, but basic facts are emerging. Here I want to focus on the seven swing states and the presidential versus senate totals.

Notably, while Kamala Harris was losing all seven to Donald Trump in the presidential vote, Democratic senators won election or re-election in 4 of the 5 swing states where a Senate election took place (WI, MI, AZ, NV). This is very unusual for recent political history — the vast majority of the time, the Presidential and Senate vote winners are from the same party. This has led to speculation about split tickets and more than a few questions about how stupid one had to be to vote for Trump for President and for a Democratic senator.

The mystery is now resolved: split tickets are almost nonexistent in nearly all the swing states. What really occurred is the “undervote” in Senate races: voters making a pick at the top of the ticket, then not voting for Senate (or anything else, in all likelihood) downballot. Take a look at these numbers, pulled from the Reuters tabulation of election results. (They are not yet final and certified, but all the swing states show 99% to 100% of votes counted, so there will be only very minor changes in the final totals).

State Harris Trump Senate-D Senate-R Harris — D Senate Trump — R Senate Wisconsin 1668229 1697626 1672777 1643996 -4548 53630 Michigan 2736533 2816636 2712686 2693680 23847 122956 Pennsylvania 3423100 3543532 3384119 3399318 38981 144214 Arizona 1582860 1770242 1676335 1595761 -93475 174481 Nevada 705197 751205 701105 677046 4092 74159 North Carolina 2715382 2898429 Georgia 2548018 2663117 Total 15379319 16140787 -31103 569440

The first columns are just straight vote counts for Harris, Trump, and the Democratic and Republican Senate candidates in each state. Take a look at the sixth column, which subtracts the Democratic Senate candidate’s vote totals from Harris totals. In 4 of 5 states, the vote for Harris ran slightly ahead of — or nearly even with — the vote for the Democratic Senate candidate. Three states show a small undervote, with Harris slightly ahead of the Democratic senator’s vote. Wisconsin shows a small overvote, with Harris running less than 6000 votes behind Senator Baldwin. The big exception is Arizona, where a large overvote had Gallego receive nearly 94,000 more votes than Harris did.What this shows us is that it’s possible nearly all the votes for Democratic Senate candidates in came from voters who supported Harris. In Wisconsin, a few thousand voters supported Baldwin but not Harris, but they are only a small art of Baldwin’s nearly 29,000 vote margin of victory. In Arizona only, there may have been a few tens of thousands of split tickets.

Now let’s look at the final column, which subtracts the Republican Senate candidate vote from Trump’s vote. Across those 5 states, Trump received almost 570,000 more votes than the Senate candidate. In other words: across those 5 states, over half a million people showed up to vote for Trump — but not for other Republican candidates. The outcome across these states does not depend on a single split ticket voter choosing both Trump and a Democratic Senate candidate. Republican Senate candidates lost, along with Harris, because of the huge Republican undervote: hundreds of thousands turned out as Trump-only voters.

And a good thing, too. If the Republican Senate candidates had run as close to Trump as the Democratic candidates did to Harris, then the Rs would have carried the Senate seats in at least Wisconsin, Michigan, and Nevada and have a 56-44 majority in the upcoming Congress. One way to look at this is that — as we saw in 2016 and 2020 with polls underestimating the Trump vote by several percentage points — Trump has a unique capacity to motivate infrequent or ‘never’ voters to show up just for him. This has obvious implications for the Presidential race in 2028.

Let’s also take a look at something else: the disappearing Biden voters. Many on Dkos and elsewhere commented (in anger, sorrow, or both) that Harris ran well behind Biden’s 2020 vote totals. But in the days after the election, there were still millions of votes to be reported in. Let’s take a look at the 99% final numbers we have now.

State Harris Trump Biden 2020 Trump 2020 Harris - Biden T24 - T20 Biden - T24 Wisconsin 1668229 1697626 1630866 1610184 37363 87442 -66760 Michigan 2736533 2816636 2804040 2649852 -67507 166784 -12596 Pennsylvania 3423100 3543532 3458229 3377674 -35129 165858 -85303 Arizona 1582860 1770242 1672143 1661686 -89283 108556 -98099 Nevada 705197 751205 703486 669890 1711 81315 -47719 North Carolina 2715382 2898429 2758775 2684292 -43393 214137 -139654 Georgia 2548018 2663117 2473633 2461854 74385 201263 -189484 Totals 15379319 16140787 15501172 15115432 -121853 1025355 -639615

As we all know, the election was incredibly close; Harris lost by a combined total of just under 230,000 votes across Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, out of almost 15,900,000 cast in those states (less than 1.5%). Meaning that once again, several hundred thousand angry Midwesterners have decided the fate of the nation — and in large measure, the world — over the next four year.

But how did Harris compare to Biden’s votes from 4 years earlier? Column 6, Harris-Biden, captures this. And what we find is that across the 7 swing states, Harris actually got more votes than Biden in 3 of them (Georgia, Wisconsin, and Nevada). Across all 7, Harris ran only 122,000 votes behind Biden, a difference of just 0.8%. Contrast this to nationwide totals, where Harris got 74,666,439 to Biden’s 81,283,501, a difference of 8.1%.

These numbers tell us two things. The first is that Harris’ campaign had a huge impact in the 7 swing states where it was focused. If the national totals are our baseline, then Harris’ campaign pulled her nearly even with Biden in the swing states, compared to an 8% dropoff across the rest of the board.

Second, they also tell us that even if Harris had matched Biden’s numbers it wouldn’t have made a difference to the outcome. The T24-T20 column shows how Trump’s 2024 votes compare to his 2020 totals. Trump got over a million more votes across the swing states in 2024 than he did 4 years earlier. The final column shows how Biden’s 2020 totals compare to Trump’s 2024 votes. Note that Joe Biden 2020 would have lost every single one of the swing states to Trump 2024, exactly as Kamala Harris did.

So Harris’ campaign was exactly where they needed to be — in the swing states — and nearly matched Biden’s totals there. Part of the big story is how, and why, Democratic turnout and votes dropped so much across other blue and red states. I believe Harris fought against a tide composed of racism, misogyny, the general turn against incumbent parties seen in democracies around the world this year, and Trump’s unique ability to come across as a populist who promises solutions to working and lower middle class voters — even if he;s incapable or uninterested in actually delivering those solutions. None of the Senate candidates had to face this same precise set of circumstances.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/11/30/2289316/-The-Swing-States-2024-Split-Tickets-and-the-Disappearing-Biden-Voters?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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