Why do some states elect two Senators from different parties?: don’t blame it on strategic voters.

Among America’s elected branches, the United States Senate has the unique feature of having two members represent each state. Because the same set of voters choose each Senator, we might expect that the overwhelming majority of states would elect two Senators from the same party. Yet split-party Senate delegations—same-state Senate duos made up of one Democrat and one Republican—have been quite common throughout history. Why? Some scholars argue that split delegations occur because voters want to “balance” their state’s overall Senate representation. Chris Donnelly finds little support for such a theory, and suggests that those seeking to explain divided Senate delegations ought to move beyond the notion that voters are strategically choosing such an arrangement.