It wasn’t by a large margin - the swing states were a lot closer than people think. Its just that the shift nationally was a pretty uniform making the results in the overall electoral college look less close than each state was. Each swing state was within 1-3%, so small differences to splitting or not filling out the ballot mattered way more here leading to split results
The swing states actually moved less to the right compared to 2020 than the rest of the country in 2024. Probably because of more campaigning in those states
EDIT: Also for an example with some specific numbers, let’s look at the Wisconsin
A decent number of trump voters only voted for Trump. They left the downballot blank because they don’t really care about anything but Trump
A disproportionate amount…
Only in swing states…
Just enough to not trigger an automatic recount…
It wasn’t by a large margin - the swing states were a lot closer than people think. Its just that the shift nationally was a pretty uniform making the results in the overall electoral college look less close than each state was. Each swing state was within 1-3%, so small differences to splitting or not filling out the ballot mattered way more here leading to split results
The swing states actually moved less to the right compared to 2020 than the rest of the country in 2024. Probably because of more campaigning in those states
EDIT: Also for an example with some specific numbers, let’s look at the Wisconsin
President race
Trump - 1,697,626
Harris - 1,668,229
Third Party - 30,015
Senate
Baldwin (D) - 1,672,777 [ 4,548 fewer votes than Harris ]
Hovde (R) - 1,643,996 [ 24,233 fewer votes than Trump ]
If we assume no split ticking, that would mean ~1.4% of Trump voters and ~0.2% of Harris voters in Wisconsin likely left the down ballot blank
Yeah, sure. But we saw a gigantic increase in split ballots.