How common are "check and balance" voters really?

[WalterWhite]

Are "check and balance" voters really that common? By "check and balance" voter, I mean someone who ALWAYS splits their ticket to ensure checks and balances. Is this really a big phenomenon in US elections?

[Benjamin Frank]

With partisanship these days, probably not at all.

1.I think you can see that at the state level. Being Canadian, it's completely foreign to me that there are so many one party state governments. No matter how unpopular the governing party may be there is zero chance in states like Alabama, Idaho, California, Florida.. that the governing party could actually lose.

There are, of course, the handful of remaining competitive states (and a handful of states like Texas may be becoming more competitive,) and there are, especially in New England, Democratic voters who seem to like balancing their large Democratic majorities in the legislature with (sane) Republican governors.

2.This used to be much more the case. In 1996 Republicans explicitely gave up on their Presidential nominee Bob Dole and asked voters to vote for Republicans for Congress as a check and balance on President Bill Clinton although, the Democrats actually narrowly won the aggregate U.S House popular vote in 1996 even as the Republicans held the House.

[Sir Mohamed]

A few still exist in certain states, though their number has significantly declined over the last two decades.

I'm sure there were a decent number of them in ME who voted for Biden and Collins, to "keep a check on him".

[TML]

A few still exist in certain states, though their number has significantly declined over the last two decades.

I'm sure there were a decent number of them in ME who voted for Biden and Collins, to "keep a check on him".

In terms of Biden/Collins voters (and this may also apply to some other contests, such as Trump/Bullock 2016 voters), I think a greater reason for such ticket splitting is not "check and balance," but rather downballot incumbents running for reelection and sufficiently localizing their races & retaining their popularity to win over many ticket-splitters (Indeed, newspaper reports from Maine in 2020 indicated that many Biden/Collins voters were turned off by the campaign tactics of Collins' challenger; exit polls showed that 23% of Biden voters viewed Gideon unfavorably, and 18% of Biden voters voted for Collins.).