Voting Across the Government: An Exit Poll Experiment in South Carolina

Abstract

Decades of political science research has focused on voter behavior. However, this literature often ignores the multifaceted nature of ballots. In elections, voters are making a series of choices across different levels of government, and recent work shows sizable shares of voters who defect from their national party choice, especially in local races. How do split-ticket voters and strict party loyalists differ? I use both Ballot Image Data and an original exit poll survey implemented in the 2018 South Carolina midterm election to show that ticket-splitters not only tend to be moderate, but also perceive candidates of the opposing party to be moderate. I experimentally show that both in partisan and non-partisan local races, voters regret their vote after learning local candidates’ policy positions. Together, these findings suggest that while partisanship is a strong heuristic on the long ballot, it does not guarantee issue congruence at the local level. Furthermore, in down-ballot races, voters are often not informed about their local candidates’ policy positions and instead candidate perception facilitates split-ticket voting.