Ticket-splitting in Pennsylvania and Maryland

This is an updated version of a column that appears in the October issue of The Business Monthly, serving Howard and Anne Arundel counties.

The presidential election this year may well be determined in places like the neighborhood where I grew up in Croydon, Pennsylvania, an aging white working-class town in lower Bucks County, just north of Philadelphia.

By contrast, your neighbors here in Maryland might have little effect on the presidential race. Trump will lose deep blue Maryland again decisively, but we could affect which party controls the U.S. Senate.

Pennsylvania is again the Keystone State in this election, as it was four years ago. It will be very difficult for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump to win the presidency without the commonwealth. In 2020, Joe Biden won it by a hair, 80,000 votes out of almost 7 million votes cast. In 2016, Trump won it by 44,000 votes out of 6.1 million votes cast.

If you’ve taken the train to New York, you’ve been through the middle of Croydon and a half block from our old house on Neshaminy Road, named after the large tidal creek that flows into the Delaware River a mile away. If you’ve driven north of Philadelphia on I-95, you’ve been just on the other side of the Neshaminy Creek from Croydon.

Visiting Croydon

I went to Croydon just before Labor Day. Our old house is showing its 72 years. Most of the houses in the neighborhood are even older, though some have been spruced up. It came as little surprise when I saw one Trump yard sign, and then another and another, and then, on Walnut Ave., a house with several Trump signs topped by a large banner.

On the next block, I was surprised to find several new houses on the site of the Catholic parish school I had attended, as did my two younger sisters and many of the neighborhood kids. St. Thomas Aquinas School once had 1,100 students. Now it was not only closed but demolished.

Joe Biden carried Bucks County by 51.5% last time, 17,300 votes. That year, Trump beat Biden in my old neighborhood with 54%. Philadelphia and its suburbs are key to any victory in the state.

My family is long gone from Croydon. My sisters and I went off to college and graduate degrees. We never looked back as we pursued successful professional careers out of state. At my father’s funeral four years ago I didn’t even recognize one of my classmates from my father’s old Knights of Columbus chapter who never left Croydon.

The people who live there are some of the Trump voters who feel left behind by the urban elites and the government. Yet they are sophisticated enough voters to vote Republican for president but continue to elect a Democratic woman to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and one of the remaining moderate, union-endorsed Republicans, Brian Fitzpatrick, to the U.S. House. The majority of Croydonites are unlikely to vote for Kamala Harris, but what the other residents of Bucks County do will likely determine the race.

Splitting tickets

Ticket splitting – voting for candidates of different parties for different offices on the same ballot – is less common than it used to be. Ticket-splitting is how Republican Larry Hogan got elected twice in Maryland with the help of a significant portion of Democrats who saw him as a fiscally conservative counterweight to the supermajority Democrats they elected to the legislature.

“The people of Maryland know me pretty well,” Hogan told me in June. “They’re trying to convince the majority of Marylanders that they were wrong about me and that somehow I was a terrible governor and that I wasn’t a bipartisan guy that tried to get things done for everybody. I don’t think there’s any way that they’ll convince the people of Maryland.”

One of the things that Marylanders know very well about Larry Hogan is that he is indeed a Republican. That might have been a selling point for centrist Democrats looking to balance a left-leaning legislature. But it makes those same centrist Democrats worry that Hogan, an anti-Trumpster from the git-go, would tip the balance of power in the U.S. Senate. Hogan could well be an independent player like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, the Democrat turned independent, who leveraged his independence to gain compromises on legislation.

But by caucusing with the Republicans, as he has said he would, Hogan would help flip the majority to the G.O.P. The majority party in the Senate and U.S. House gets to set the agenda, control the flow of business, and confirm all the judges. It gets more staff and chairs all its committees.

That’s why Democratic groups and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, Hogan’s Democratic opponent for U.S. Senate, are pounding home the message that Hogan is really a Republican, using his own words.

Hogan remains very popular with voters. Analyzing his late August opinion survey, longtime Maryland pollster Patrick Gonzales says: “Hogan is that one-off politician who’s viewed favorably by Democrats, Republicans, and independents. But he’s up against an opponent who is herself exceptionally popular within her party base.”

Can Hogan snag 30% of Dems?

“For a Republican to win statewide in Maryland it always comes down to basic mathematics … can Hogan snatch away 30% of the Democratic vote to secure victory on Nov. 5?” Gonzales asks.

To prevent that, Alsobrooks and supporters, including hefty financial help from Gov. Wes Moore, are pounding the theme that Hogan is deceiving them about his support for reproductive rights. This is one of the most potent issues for Democrats and the issue itself is directly on the ballot as Question 1, establishing “the fundamental right to reproductive liberty” in the state constitution.

In 2022, Democrats in the legislature also passed a measure (HB937) that expanded the number of healthcare providers that could perform abortions. It also expanded coverage of all abortions by Medicaid and any insurer that also covered pregnancy care. Hogan vetoed the bill, saying it violated his commitment to make no changes in Maryland law about abortion and it endangered women by allowing non-physicians to perform abortions. The legislature overrode Hogan’s veto, and infuriating them, he later refused to release the $3.5 million the bill required to train the added abortion providers.

Hogan’s opponents say his actions on this bill speak far louder than any pledge to back the right to abortion. Ads by outside groups backing Alsobrooks use older video clips of Hogan praising Trump’s Supreme Court nominees and restating his longtime personal opposition to abortion to counter his current pledge to uphold Roe v. Wade. They ask voters: Who do you trust, the old Hogan or the new Hogan?

A mid-August poll by AARP showed a tied race, Gonzales found Alsobrooks 5 points ahead, and a later Emerson College poll had Alsobrooks pulling ahead by 8. And the late September poll by The Washington Post and the University of Maryland shows Alsobrooks 11 points ahead.

The Cook Political Report continues to rate the race as “Likely Democrat,” its second-highest prediction, as does Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

As Gonzales says, the key question is whether Hogan can get 30% of Democrats to split their tickets and vote for him. That’s what Alsobrooks, Moore, and leading Democrats are working hard to prevent.