Democrat U.S. Senator-elect Ruben Gallego's victory in the 2024 Arizona Senate race coupled with Republican President-elect Donald Trump's victory in the General Election — receiving over 1.7 million votes in Arizona, according to the Associated Press — has signified the occurrence of a political phenomenon known as split-ticket voting.
The term refers to situations when individuals vote for a candidate from one party for one position, but vote for a candidate from a different party for another position.
This phenomenon can occur in politics but varies greatly on a case-by-case basis. In this specific instance, political experts in Arizona identified several main contributing factors.
One of these key factors was how Ruben Gallego could frame himself to bring in Arizonans with Republican values who voted for Trump in the General Election.
"He (Gallego) was able to really lean into his blue-collar upbringing, his working-class roots, his military service," said Paul Bentz, the senior vice president of research and strategy at Highground Public Affairs. "I think that really helped him with that portion of the electorate that was very attracted to some of Trump's messaging."
Even Gallego's policy approach embraced more typically Republican issues, according to students who heard Gallego speak on the campaign trail.
"At least in the town hall I went to, he spoke a lot on border security," said Arav Rastogi, a freshman studying music learning and teaching. "His stance on the border, I think, helped a lot of Trump voters sway over to him."
Gallego's strategy of emphasizing more moderate aspects of his background was aided by the fact that he was able to spread his message very early on because he ran unopposed in the primary election, unlike his opponent, Kari Lake.
"He didn't have any opposition in his primary, where Lake did, and so he avoided a divisive primary", said Kim Fridkin, a foundation professor of the School of Politics and Global Studies. "I think that helped build a positive image."
This messaging especially helped Gallego distinguish himself from other Democratic candidates who struggled greatly in the 2024 election, Bentz said.
"He was able to create empathy that helped inoculate him against some of the criticisms that harmed other Democrats," Bentz said.
Another key part of Gallego's victory, in Bentz's view, was his ability to appeal to the same young male voters that overwhelmingly voted for Trump this election.
"Gallego maybe just didn't take those audiences for granted," Bentz said. "A lot of Democrats look at younger voters just assuming they're going to vote young … there's a lot of folks that just assume the long line at ASU on Election Day would be good for Democrats, but that's not necessarily the case."
While Gallego's actions were a crucial part of the split-ticket voting puzzle in Arizona, equally as significant were the shortcomings of his opponent Kari Lake, and how she lost such a crucial number of voters who voted for Trump in the General Election.
There were a multitude of factors contributing to this defeat, but the difference in financial resources between Lake and Gallego was the most contrasting, Fridkin said.
"I don't think that Lake had that much money on her own," Fridkin said. "And then early on, the Republican National Senatorial Committee decided not to put money into the Lake campaign because they didn't think that she was going to win."
Both Bentz and Fridkin agreed that financial woes were not the sole reason for Lake's loss — the two pointed to her framing and campaign strategies as more of a driving force behind the results.
"She did a lot to hurt herself among some of that Republican crossover vote," Bentz said. "She told John McCain supporters to get the hell out of the party. She made inroads trying to sort of solve some of those problems, but then immediately attacked those same types of people on Twitter."
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These attacks on some members of her own party were part of Lake's faults as a candidate, Bentz said, but they were coupled with her attempts to overly appeal to certain members of the party as well.
"She really presented herself as a facsimile of Trump, and there's only one Trump," Bentz said. "There's some of his folks that don't necessarily like her trying to take that mantle."
Furthermore, Lake's history of election denial in 2020 alienated some young voters.
"The fact that she wasn't able to step aside and realize that she didn't win and reshape her campaign around that just drew me away," Rastogi said.
Fridkin said Lake's failure in modeling herself after Trump could be more so due to the fact that she differed from him in a key way: her gender.
Fridkin said that her research into the 2024 general election revealed that individuals with "higher levels of gender stereotypes" generally voted for Trump over Harris, and Fridkin speculated that this may have carried over into the Arizona Senate race as well, with Lake's gender depressing her "MAGA impact."
Lake's loss seems to be an outlier in an election cycle that saw massive Republican victories, and it will be up to Democrats in the coming years to attempt new strategies, perhaps like Gallego has done, to make up that ground, Bentz said.
"This is a type of Republican dominance that we hadn't seen in a long time," Bentz said. "And so the question is, does it stay this way?"
Edited by George Headley, Abigail Beck and Alysa Horton.
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