How ticket-splitting voters could shape the 2026 midterms

Cardin was a retiring three-term Democrat who had last won reelection in 2018 by an astronomical margin of over 34 percentage points. Initially, many expert analysts saw the seat as safe for Democrats.

Then, in February 2024, former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who had previously ruled out a Senate run, surprised political analysts by entering the Republican primary. After winning the primary handily, Hogan eventually squared off against Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, a Democrat, in the general election.

Suddenly, a matchup that should have been Alsobrook’s to lose got competitive.

Hogan, who left office in 2023, was a successful Republican governor who won election twice in reliably blue Maryland. Perceived by many voters as an ideological moderate, he was also a vocal Trump opponent in a state that supported Biden over Trump in 2020 by around 33 percentage points. During his governorship, Hogan routinely outperformed MAGA-aligned Republicans who ran for Congress in Maryland.

Ultimately, Hogan did lose to Alsobrooks. She became Maryland’s first female U.S. senator and first Black U.S. senator. Yet Hogan came an incredible 17 percentage points closer to winning than Trump did. Kamala Harris beat Trump by 1.9 million votes, winning 63% of the electorate to Trump’s 34%.

This means that Hogan exceeded Trump’s vote total by over 300,000 votes. That’s an immense amount of ticket-splitting by Marylanders in 2024.

Who are the Hogan Democrats?

To better understand ticket-splitting in Maryland’s 2024 election, I analyzed a survey that my university conducted in Baltimore County. Baltimore County is a bellwether county that has backed the winning gubernatorial candidate in every election since 2006.

The UMBC Battleground Exit Poll surveyed 1,119 voters at election precincts across Baltimore County during early voting and on Election Day 2024. The results were weighted to ensure demographic representativeness.

This extensive survey shows that around 10% of all voters in Baltimore County supported the surprising combination of the Democrat Harris and the Republican Hogan.

In contrast, fewer than 2% of Trump voters split their tickets to back the Democratic Senate candidate Alsobrooks.

My team’s data analysis shows that roughly half of Harris-Hogan voters – 51% – were Democrats. These ticket-splitters included a higher percentage of white voters than the Democrats who supported both Harris and Alsobrooks. Around 37% of Harris-Hogan voters identified as Black, Asian, Hispanic, Middle Eastern or another nonwhite racial category, compared with 55% of Harris-Alsobrooks voters.

We found virtually no gender differences between Democrats who split their tickets to back a woman for president and a man for Senate and those who backed two women candidates.

Harris-Hogan Democrats tended to be better educated than other voting groups. Around 68% reported having a college degree, compared with around 51% of all survey respondents.

Perhaps the most striking feature of Harris-Hogan voters is their self-declared moderation.

On a seven-point ideological scale ranging from “very liberal” to “very conservative,” around 61% of Harris-Hogan ticket-splitters put themselves at the exact midpoint of the scale. Only around 42% of the full sample of Maryland voters categorized themselves as centrist.

Can moderates survive in Trump’s shadow?

As our study shows, Hogan’s popularity in Maryland is due in part to his appeal among moderates. This finding helps to explain how this Republican has remained popular among Democrats and independent voters.

However, Hogan still lost. Unlike in Arizona, where the Democratic Senate candidate Ruben Gallego won by wooing moderate Republicans, the tenuous balance of power in the U.S. House and Senate may have prevented some Democratic and independent voters in Maryland from crossing the aisle to support a moderate Republican.

Of course, Hogan also faced a formidable opponent. Alsobrooks had already emerged victorious in a tight primary against a well-funded and popular incumbent U.S. House representative, David Trone. I suspect a less-skilled Democratic candidate would have created even more Harris-Hogan voters.

Ultimately, my analysis of ticket-splitting in 2024 reveals that even in an era of entrenched polarization, many voters approach congressional and presidential races with different mindsets.

This dynamic will likely influence the next election cycle, too.

The party of the president often takes heavy losses in midterm elections. In 2026, congressional candidates – and Democrats in particular – will be doing everything they can to woo moderates.

This will be especially true if Trump’s aggressive policies, such as widespread government layoffs and mass deportations, prove unpopular.

Let the campaigning begin.

Ian Anson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.