How Ticket Splitter works

Why this exists

More voters than ever say neither party fully represents them. But checking every candidate on a ballot, from U.S. Senate down to county judge, takes more time than most people have. Ticket Splitter does that homework with you, one issue at a time.

How the quiz works

Each question asks where you stand and how much the issue matters to your vote: not much, somewhat, a lot, or a deal-breaker. The answer choices run from one end of the debate to the other, written so that people on each side would recognize their own view.

Every question has a plain-English explainer with the strongest case for each side and who actually decides the issue, from Congress down to your school board. You can skip anything you're unsure about.

What "closer to typical Republican" or "Democratic" means

For issues where the parties have a clear line, we mark which answer is closest to each party's recent national platform and common positions. Your results show, weighted by how much each issue matters to you, how often you land closer to each party, and where a straight-ticket vote would work against you.

Some issues have no clear party line, like trade, foreign policy, Social Security, marijuana and data centers. Both parties are split on them, so we label them that way instead of forcing a side.

Individual candidates often break from their party. That is the point of this tool: matching you to the people on your ballot, not to a letter next to their name.

How we stay nonpartisan

• No endorsements. We never tell you who to vote for.
• Every explainer gives the strongest good-faith case for each side.
• Every fact links to its source, so you can check it yourself.
• Every page is fact-checked against its sources before it goes live.
• We are not funded by any party, campaign, or political group, and we run no ads.

About the totals

The totals show how people who took the quiz answered. They are not a scientific poll: the people who take the quiz are not a random sample of voters, and we don't know who anyone is. To protect privacy, we don't show a total until at least 20 people have answered.

Your privacy

• No personal information, ever. Use the site as a guest, or create an account with any username, even a made-up one.
• If you save your answers, your browser encrypts them before they leave your device. We never see your saved answers, your username, or your password.
• When you finish the quiz, we add your answers to anonymous running totals, like "1,204 people chose this answer." We store only the totals, never anyone's set of answers, and nothing that links them to a person. You can turn this off at any time.
• No ads, no tracking, no cookies, and no request logs.
• Delete your account and answers at any time with one button. Deleting also takes your answers back out of the totals.
• Because we can't see your password, we can't reset it. Keep the recovery code you get when you sign up.