down-ballot

down-ballot adjective: pertaining to the election of a relatively minor officeholder.

Adjective

down-ballot (comparative more down-ballot, superlative most down-ballot)

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.2012, Howie Carr, Hard Knocks, →ISBN
- In 2012, Coleman again secured his reelection with more than 90 percent of the vote, and Democratic candidates in his district secured a greater share of the mean precinct down-ballot vote in 2012 than in 2000.2013, George Hawley, Voting and Migration Patterns in the U.S., →ISBN

In down-ballot races, television advertising is rare.2015, John S Klemanski, David A. Dulio, Michael Switalski, Campaigns from the Ground Up, →ISBN:
One task of these developers at the party was to create tools for state parties and down-ballot candidates built from this data architecture.2016, Daniel Kreiss, Prototype Politics, →ISBN:

comparative	more down-ballot
superlative	most down-ballot

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

What does down-ballot mean?: Down-ballot means pertaining to the election of a relatively minor officeholder.
How do you use down-ballot in a sentence?: In down-ballot races, television advertising is rare.
What part of speech is down-ballot?: Down-ballot is an adjective.

Adapted from Wiktionary: down-ballot (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “down-ballot.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/down-ballot. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.