People fundamentally don’t understand how people vote!
I wrote about how voters didn’t understand the “write-in candidate” procedure- at least as to how it is managed in Michigan. Since then much has been written about the BIG LIE and the well known false allegations of stolen election via voter fraud. No need to go into all that here as it has been beat to death numerous times though, like a zombie, keeps walking.
What I want to touch on is actually a little bit about how voters actually vote. What brings it to mind is a comment Trump made shortly after the November 2020 election in which he said (and I paraphrase) “How did all these other guys win and I lost?” Presumably he is referring to how many Republicans downballot won while he did not
His comment reveals an complete ignorance or misunderstanding of how people actually vote as well as the dynamics of districts vs general election.
First, Republicans did a great job of gerrymandering in 2010. They had a nationwide program called RedMap which they utilized heavily after winning control of many state houses around the nation in the anti-Obama Tea Party surge.[2] Controlling state legislators allowed them to control drawing districts safely for Republican elections. In Michigan, it meant that for the past decade (until 2018 election) Republicans dominated our US House delegation by 9 to 5 even though an analysis I did showed the total cumulative votes for the five Democrats exceed the total cumulative votes for the nine Republicans in the 2016 election. Michigan largely leans Democratic which is why we have had two Democratic senators for much of my lifetime since they are elected statewide vs gerrymandered districts.
Second, the vast majority of voters do not vote straight ticket. Straight ticket means that if you want to vote all Democratic or all Republican rather than go down the ballot to each seat up for election and fill in numerous bubbles, you simply fill in one bubble at the top under Democrat or Republican. Until the Obama years I rarely voted straight ticket and instead would vote for some Republicans for some seats, or even a Libertarian or Green Party candidate. As of 2016, I will no longer vote other than straight ticket Democratic for political reasons we don’t need to go into in this article.
Michigan Republicans tried to eliminate straight ticket voting in 2018 which would give them an edge in elections slightly. Michigan voters fought back and put a ballot proposal up which restored straight ticket voting among other elements such as no-excuse absentee (mail in) ballot voting. Republicans theorized Democratic leaning voters use straight ticket more prevalently than Republican voters and that seems to be true especially in metro Detroit. However, older voters in west Michigan seem to use straight ticket for voting Republican. I cannot find the actual statistics I saw after 2016 during the debate about straight ticket voting but it was not a high percentage — going from memory maybe overall 20–25% of voters at that time used straight ticket. That seems to have gone up in 2020, however.[3]
But from personal experience I can attest that the data in 2016 in particular showed ticket splitting. I ran for Congress in Michigan’s 2nd Congressional District and there were numerous election returns from precincts in which Hillary Clinton got more votes than I did. That illustrated to me that people voted for Hillary for president then went to the Republican side of the ballot for the congressional race. Likely deeper analysis farther down the ballot would reveal even more back and forth voting on the part of the electorate.
In summary, ticket splitting and gerrymandered safe districts versus candidates running in at-large elections have a big effect on who can win or lose.
And as an aside, when I ran in 2016 and canvassed door to door I spoke to anyone -whether they had a Trump sign or not. I didn’t know why they supported him (though I found him detestable). But by 2020, if I had run I would not have wasted time on someone with a Trump sign. So another factor in the Trump loss (aside from massive Democratic engagement) could be Trump himself. Some of the 2016 voters gave him a chance and by 2020 found him disappointing to their original expectations and decided to vote for Biden.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP
[3] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-wasnt-that-much-split-ticket-voting-in-2020/
