Wisconsin repealed the straight-ticket device in 2011. This Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story says that the change in the 2012 election was helpful to incumbent Republican legislators. Thanks to Rick Kissell for the link.
Wisconsin repealed the straight-ticket device in 2011. This Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story says that the change in the 2012 election was helpful to incumbent Republican legislators. Thanks to Rick Kissell for the link.
Again – how much falloff for the lower offices ???
Donkey voters need some stimulus to vote for mere State legislature officers ???
Democrats and Democratic Party voters have the lowest IQ by party. It’s no surprise that they are the most dependent on straight ticket voting in order to cast a ballot.
Some day, perhaps by accident, Be Rational will post something rational.
Perhaps @3 you should do a bit of study and research. Dems have the lowest IQ by party.
Teamsters Union members have the lowest IQ by job.
4 –
I was wrong. Maybe not even by accident.
An extremely weak analysis (and it was an Op-Ed, not an article).
The “data” underlying the assertion is this:
“In 2012, there were seven Assembly districts that Obama won by a combined 11,330 votes, but that the Republican Assembly candidates also won by a combined 11,443 votes – despite there being 6,700 fewer votes cast. Some of these races were extremely close; for instance, Republican Scott Krug from Nekoosa won by 109 votes despite there being 1,347 fewer votes cast in his race than in the presidential race. Republican Howard Marklein from Spring Green won his district by 1,041 votes; Obama won the same district by 5,516 votes.”
Let’s go through his summary. Obama had a 11,330 vote lead in the 7 districts. 6,700 fewer votes were cast in the Assembly races. For the sake of discussion, let’s assume that all 6,700 dropoffs were from Obama-bots who would have voted a straight Democratic ticket. Obama would still have 4,630 vote lead. For the 7 Republican candidates to end up with a 11,443 vote lead, there would still have to be over 8,000 switches (Obama for President, Republican for Assembly).
It gets even murkier if we look at individual races.
For example, Mr. Schneider did not mention the two districts carried by Romney and a Democratic assembly candidate.
And notice that Mr.Schneider omitted the presidential race for Scott Krug’s race. That is because Romney ran ahead of Krug.
The other specific race was Howard Marklein’s race. In this case, he mentions Obama’s margin, but he leaves out that the dropoff. Why? Because even if every dropoff was due to an Obama-bot, Marklein would still have won. And that would also require every single Johnson, Stein, and Goode voter to vote for Marklein rather than skipping the race or voting for the Democrat. Marklein ran well ahead of Romney across the district, but particularly well in his home county. He either did some exceptional personal campaigning, or his opponent was particularly inept.
Riley, you are obtuse. To see the effect of this change in straight ticket voting, you have to compare voting with and without straight ticket voting. You are only looking at 2012 votes. It seems murky to you because you have nothing to measure with.
The author did it better:
“Perhaps the most vivid monument to straight-ticket voting in Wisconsin is Democrat Dawn Marie Sass’ 2006 election to the position of state treasurer. In 2006 Republicans were routed, as Mark Green lost his gubernatorial race against incumbent Jim Doyle, the Senate went to the Democrats and the Assembly GOP majority was significantly weakened.
When Sass defeated longtime GOP Treasurer Jack Voight, she was virtually unknown; in fact, she was working as a clerk at a Milwaukee-area Boston Store before she was elected to the state treasurer position, which paid $70,000 per year.
Predictably, she ran the treasurer’s office like a Kardashian, jetting off to taxpayer-funded trips in tropical locations and hiring family members to serve on her staff.”
The fact is that without straight ticket voting, many Democrats have no clue who to vote for, what the issues are, what the candidates stand for, or even who the candidates are, so they will vote for other candidates they think they have heard of, or by nationality, race, religion, physical attractiveness, the sound of the name, flip a coin, or just not bother to choose at all.
#7 Even a Beer Rat should realize that you can’t compare different offices for the effect of straight ticket voting.
Nobody knows what a State Treasurer does. Back when a legislature would ride to the state capital for a month once a year, and leave the governor alone for the rest of the year, they didn’t want to hand the state checkbook to the governor. Now you can let a computer write state payroll checks.
In Texas, Warren G Harding and Jesse James were long-time State Treasurers. The next treasurer was elected governor. “She seems to be doing a pretty good job at Treasurer, let’s make her governor.” The next treasurer was elected senator. “She seems to be doing a pretty good job at Treasurer, let’s make her senator.” The next treasurer campaigned to abolish the office. “The treasurer is just a stepping-stone office and isn’t needed” Texas doesn’t have a State Treasurer any more.
It is an ideal office to win on the basis of party coattails, because no voter knows how qualified either of the candidates is, even if they are the incumbent.
A pollster could ask, “If the election for Lignite Aperture were today, would you vote for Jack Voight, the Republican, or Jean Marie Sass, the Democrat?
Voters would vote based on party. It doesn’t matter in the least that the office of Lignite Aperture does not exist.
The pollster could reverse the party affiliations, and Republicans would vote for Sass, and Democrats would vote for Voight. Or they could simply make up names.
Most voters vote based on party, they would do so even if there was not a magic straight-ticket box.
Sass ran against Voight in 1998 and 2002 before winning in 2006. I suspect many voters thought, “Sass is doing a pretty good job as Treasurer, but that Voight guy ought to give it up.” They had no idea who held the office, and who was the perennial candidate. Sass might have won in 2002, but there was a Green candidate who siphoned off votes.
If you wanted to look at the effect of removal of the straight-ticket device on state assembly races, you would look at state assembly races.
In 2012, the dropoff between president and assembly was typically between 3% and 5%. This may have been a tad higher than 2008. But most Democrat voters and most Republican voters managed to vote for Republican and Democratic candidates without the magic straight-ticket box.
In Assembly District 51, over 10% of voters voted Obama(D)-Marklein(R). 3.5% of voters voted Somebody_For_President-Nobody_for_Assembly. Even if every single one of those Somebody_For_President were Democratic voters who would have marked the Democratic straight-ticket box, Marklein would still have won.
You’re insisting on making the same error in logic. You are only looking at 2012. You are also making invalid assumptions. For example: you claim that 3.5% voted for somebody or Pres & Nobody for Assembly. However it could be that 5% voted for P but not A and that 1.5% voted for A but not P. And how does this compare to when the straight ticket device existed?
You have to compare elections for the same offices over a number of years both with and without the straight ticket device.
Is there more drop-off, the same, less?
Does exit polling show a greater propensity to ticket-splitting (since mere vote totals do not reveal this)?
etc.
There are scores of important factors you are ignoring.
You do the same with “top-two.”
I did not only look at 2012. You are the one making the invalid assumptions. It is the assumption of you and Mr.Schneider that several Republican assembly candidates won only because of the elimination of the straight-ticket device.
Wisconsin has very decentralized election administration, so it is difficult to determine the true undervote, because most counties don’t report it. But of those that do, the presidential undervote ranges from 0.65% to 0.2%, so let’s say 0.5%. Therefore using the differential undervote (assembly minus president) understates the assembly undervote by 0.5%.
In 2008, the relative assembly undervote in races with both a Democratic and Republican candidate was 4.0%. In 2012, it was around 5.8%, so it is possible that the removal of the straight-ticket device increased the average assembly undervote by 1.8%.
In the 11 close assembly races (margin under 5%) the average differential assembly undervote was 4.0%. Where races were expected to be competitive, voters may have been encouraged to complete the ballot. Alternatively, voters in competitive districts may be more likely to vote a split ticket. Assembly districts are of a small enough size that it is unlikely that they have a highly polarized electorate that just happens to balance to make a competitive race. So the few districts that are actually competitive have a good mix of voters (not large cities or suburbs).
In 2012, there was a greater variation in the assembly undervote, with particularly high numbers in Milwaukee, Waukesha, and Brown counties. The Milwaukee districts are in the suburbs, since the city districts don’t have Republican candidates.
Voters in larger metropolitan areas are less likely to know who their state legislators are. There are too many districts for TV and larger newspapers to cover in any depth, even before the election.
In contrast, in smaller towns, the weekly newspaper and radio station may cover the local legislators on a regular basis.
Brown County (Green Bay) had very high assembly undervotes, with the three districts wholly within the county having over 10% undervotes, and the portions of assembly districts partially within the county having higher assembly undervotes than the remainder in the districts.
Perhaps wearing giant cheeses on their heads is symptomatic of a weak mind.
Only one of the close districts was in Brown County, AD-88, which had a 10.3% assembly dropoff rate. But Romney carried the district. The Republican assembly candidate received 6.4% fewer votes than Romney, while the Democrat received 12.5% fewer votes than Obama. But even if the higher dropoff for Democrats was due to more Democrats dependent on the crutch of the straight-ticket device, it was not the reason the Republican won. Romney won the district. Elimination of the straight-ticket device may simply increased the margin of victory.
And if we remove AD-88 from consideration, the average dropoff rate for the other 10 close races is a quite low 3.3%.
In close assembly races, the dropoff rate is very low, and not of sufficient magnitude to flip the races.
Christian Schneider and Beer Rat are simply wrong about the effect of the elimination of the straight-ticket device in Wisconsin.