Thursday, Dec. 22, 2022
Was Nevada one of only a handful of states to elect a senator and governor from different parties?
In the 2022 election, 26 states elected both a governor and a U.S. senator. Six of them selected candidates from different parties for the two positions. Kansas and Wisconsin chose Democratic governors, while Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire and Vermont chose Republicans.
The 2022 midterms were aligned with recent history: the 2014 and 2018 midterm elections also saw six states split their tickets for these two key offices. Vermont, New Hampshire, Kansas and Ohio had the highest share of split tickets; the first three re-elected incumbents to both offices.
With increased political polarization in the U.S., ticket-splitting has become less common than it was in the 1970s and 1980s. Currently, 95 of the 100 U.S. senators are from the same party as the candidate that won their state’s presidential election in 2020 — a record number.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.
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