Enigmatic voter group could split ticket for Trump, Dem Senate candidate in Arizona
One group of voters could fuel a win for Democrats in the Arizona Senate race while also propelling former President Trump to victory in the key battleground state.
Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris among registered voters in Arizona 49% to 45% in a new poll from the New York Times and Siena College. This was a notable shift from their numbers last month, when Harris came out on top.
At the same time, Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., bested Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake 50% to 41%.
According to the New York Times, "The respondents who said they were splitting their ticket – supporting Mr. Gallego and Mr. Trump – were much more likely to be Latino, less college-educated and lower-income."
Gallego voted 100% in line with President Biden and Harris' administration in the 117th Congress, per FiveThirtyEight, and is by no means a fan of Trump, and the former president is an ardent supporter of Lake.
Despite their political disagreements, they've managed to simultaneously attract a key group of voters.
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"You always have to consider in American politics whether gender is playing a role," Melissa Michelson, the dean of arts and sciences and a political science professor at Menlo College in California, told Fox News Digital.
Trump and Gallego are both facing off against women in their respective races.
"What gender scholars will tell you is that when women are running, they face additional challenges," she explained.
With Trump's election in 2016, his strength among those without college degrees became evident. He's also shown an ability to appeal to non-White voters, including Latinos, who are considered integral to the Democrats' coalition.
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His enduring appeal to these types of voters is on display in the latest poll as well. "And yes, those same voters would be more likely to prefer the Latino candidate," said Michelson, explaining the preference of some of those voters for Gallego in the Senate race.
She noted that Latinos tend to vote Democrat more often than not and that they also tend to vote for Latino candidates. "If a candidate before you is both your shared racial group and your shared party, then that's easy," Michelson remarked.
When it comes to women perhaps feeling inclined to vote for women candidates, she pointed out that gender isn't "as strong of an identity or as strong of a motivator of vote choice."
"People just don't think about their gender the same way they think about their race."
The potential for a split result in Arizona, with Trump winning the presidency and Gallego taking the open Senate seat, would be notable given the recent decline in split-ticket voting.
Republican strategist Kevin Madden said the vote is ultimately "candidate-dependent."
"Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Ruben Gallego in Arizona are examples of two candidates running very carefully tailored races that are customized to their state's political environment," he told Fox News Digital.
It's true that Gallego has made a concerted effort to reach a male, Latino audience. For Cinco de Mayo this year, his campaign held a watch party in Glendale at JL Boxing Academy for a match between champion Mexican boxer Canelo Álvarez and fellow fighter Jaime Munguía, who was undefeated until that point. The venue was reportedly outfitted with large screens displaying the fight, and the event featured food trucks serving birria tacos and Mexican Cokes outside.
The watch party was expected to draw over 100 guests, mainly Latino Arizonans and their families.
"They're doing whatever they can to get out of the national political jet-stream and make their campaign less of a proxy on the presidential contest," Madden said.
Michelson claimed that recent endorsements from the Arizona Police Association (APA) for both Gallego and Trump could encourage the increasingly rare practice of split-ticket voting. Despite backing Trump and reportedly endorsing Lake during her 2022 gubernatorial bid, the union chose Democrat Gallego in the Senate race in 2024.
However, Lake did get the backing of a separate police union, the Arizona Fraternal Order of Police, earlier this month.