The nature of American politics 39Eisenhower, but only 28 million voted for Republican candidates for the
House of Representatives.
During the 1960s this pattern of voting Republican for the presidency
and Democrat for Senate and House candidates – ‘presidential republican-
ism’ – became extremely important, particularly in the Southern states. As
the ties of party loyalty weakened in the United States, and the behaviour
of the electorate became more volatile and independent, the tendency to-
wards split-ticket voting increased. In 1996, 65 per cent of voters reported
that they had split the ticket at some time. One of the best ways to measure
the propensity of the electorate to split its votes between the candidates of
different parties is to compare the vote for the presidential candidates in a
particular state with the votes for the senatorial candidates. Both offices, the
presidency and membership of the Senate, are ‘national’ offices, and the vote
for each is a state-wide vote for one office. In other words, as far as possible,
the ‘constituencies’ are comparable. In the election of 1960, 82.7 per cent of
the voters in Virginia supported the Democratic candidate for the Senate,
but only 47.0 per cent voted for the Democratic presidential candidate, John
F. Kennedy. Although partisanship has increased in recent years split-ticket
voting is still an important factor in the outcome of elections. In the election
of 2004 there were thirty-four Senate seats up for election, and the elections
took place on the same day, and on the same ballot paper, as the election for
president. In seven states the voters chose the candidate of one party for the
presidency and the candidate of the opposing party for the Senate. In five
states the Republican, George W. Bush, received a majority of the votes but
a Democratic senator was elected. In two states John Kerry was successful
at the presidential level, but a Republican won the Senate race. In some of
these states the number of voters that split the ticket was relatively small,
but in two states the extent of ticket splitting was remarkable: North Dakota
and Indiana. In North Dakota, George W. Bush had a majority of 85,599 votes
over the Democratic challenger, John Kerry, but in the election for the Sen-
ate the Democratic candidate, Byron L. Dorgan, who had been Senator from
North Dakota since 1992, had a majority of 113,590 over the Republican can-
didate. In Indiana, Bush won by 510,427 over Kerry, but the Senate race went
to the incumbent Democratic Senator Evan Bayh, who had a majority over
his Republican opponent of 593,066.
One of the aspects of the phenomenon of split-ticket voting is that voters
may be inclined to vote for incumbent candidates, those who are already in
office, whom they judge to have been doing a reasonably good job, irrespec-
tive of the voter’s party identification – presumably on the basis of choosing
the devil you know rather than the devil you don’t. The importance of being
an incumbent is illustrated by the re-election to the Senate of Arlen Specter
from Pennsylvania in 2004. In 1980 the Republicans won Pennsylvania for
Ronald Reagan and Arlen Specter, Republican, was elected to the Senate
for the first time. In 1992 Bill Clinton won the presidency for the Democrats
and carried Pennsylvania by a large majority, but on the same ballot Specter