What does "down-ballot" mean?

Pertaining to the election of a relatively minor officeholder.

What is a synonym for "down-ballot"?

Common synonyms include: down-ticket.

Down-ballot

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective

1
Pertaining to the election of a relatively minor officeholder.
"Just as I stepped out of the shower, I got a call from a state senator who was planning to run for a down-ballot statewide office against the mayor of a suburban city."

Synonyms

All synonyms

down-ticket

Example

More examples

"Just as I stepped out of the shower, I got a call from a state senator who was planning to run for a down-ballot statewide office against the mayor of a suburban city."

Etymology

From the organization of most electoral ballots, which list electoral offices in descending order of the amount of power wielded by the officeholder.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.