Deirdre Shesgreen and Ledyard King

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Springfield could be vote-rich territory for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and not just because it’s one of Missouri’s most conservative enclaves.

The greater Springfield metro area is also home to as many as 123,000 “disaffected Democrats” — party-line voters who this year are so turned off by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton that they’re considering casting a ballot for Trump.

That’s according to an analysis by Deep Root Analytics, a media data firm that works for Republican candidates.

On the flip side, the firm’s analysis projects that 37,000 Republicans in the Springfield metro area might stray from their GOP roots to support Clinton.

Those numbers highlight this year’s scrambled electoral landscape, which features the least popular nominee in Republican history (Trump) and the least popular nominee in Democratic history (Clinton).

“We think this has the potential to be an extraordinary year for ticket-splitters … (because) you’ve got two candidates at the top of the ticket who have historically high negative favorability ratings,” said Alex Lundry, Deep Roots’ chief data scientist.

The Springfield figures are extrapolated from a national poll conducted by Deep Roots, and they encompass the entire Springfield media market, or nearly 700,00 registered voters in the region.

His firm’s report did not look at the traditionally coveted “swing voters,” who occupy the political middle and don’t identify strongly with one party or the other. Instead, it examined partisan voters who, in most years, would cast reliable party-line ballots.

This year, many of those may cross over in the presidential race, Lundry said, and then switch back to vote for their own party’s candidates in down-ballot races, such as Missouri’s Senate race between Republican Sen. Roy Blunt and his challenger, Democratic Secretary of State Jason Kander.

Local political activists agreed that the typical partisan political math might not apply in this year’s topsy-turvy presidential election.

“The conventional wisdom playbook is out the window,” said Skyler Johnston, executive director of the Greene County Democratic Party. “It’s really hard to get a pulse on this.”

Johnston said independents and GOP-leaning voters have streamed into his office, disenchanted with Trump and seeking information about Democratic candidates up and down the ballot.

“Donald Trump spits venom, and every time he opens his mouth, my doorbell rings at this office,” Johnston said.

Meanwhile, at the Greene County Republican Central Committee, Chairwoman Danette Proctor said she has seen Trump draw in new Democratic support, while also failing to rev up some traditional Republicans in the area.

“Our base does need energizing,” Proctor said, adding that some rock-ribbed Republicans are “holding back” on supporting the GOP presidential nominee.

“It’s just an unusual circumstance on both sides,” Proctor said.

Deep Root’s report estimates 16 percent of registered voters in Missouri, about 659,000 voters, fall into the “disaffected Democrat” category. And more than 500,000 GOP voters, or about 12 percent of registered voters, are “reluctant Republicans” who vote for Clinton.

The analysis is based on a national survey of 7,394 registered voters conducted via landline, cell and mobile web. Deep Root then builds a predictive model of how likely every single voter in the country is to be a reluctant Republican or a disaffected Democrat.

Every voter in the country gets a probability score between zero and one of how likely they are to be in each group. Those voters with the highest probabilities are considered to be a part of that group.

Other political experts agree the 2016 election could produce a spike in split-ticket voting, but they expressed skepticism it would reach such high levels. The American electorate has become more polarized and more partisan in recent decades, which had led to a precipitous decline in split-ticket voting.

Once common in U.S. elections, ticket-splitting reached an all-time low in 2012, according to the American National Election Study. A 2014 study by the Pew Research Center found that 81 percent of voters planned to vote a straight-party ticket.

David C. Kimball, a political scientist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis who has studied voting patterns, said he did not expect the downward trend in ticket-splitting to dramatically reverse itself in this election. Instead of a big jump in crossover votes, he said, more people may not vote at all.

“I would expect to see … people not turning out because they’re turned off by the choices facing them,” Kimball said. That may be particularly true on the GOP side, he said, which could make Missouri more competitive for Clinton.

Proctor, the Greene County GOP chair, said she thinks Republicans will turn out, and they will not vote for Clinton. But she's worried some GOP voters may leave the presidential ballot blank.

“If you don’t vote, that is a vote for Hillary. We’re pushing that (message) very hard, very hard,” Proctor said.

On the Democratic side, Johnston said some supporters of Clinton’s primary rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, have still not come into the Clinton column.

“I’m seeing a small percentage of really passionate Bernie supporters taking a look at third-party candidates like Jill Stein,” he said, referring to the Green Party's presidential candidate. “But I’m not seeing people defect to Trump.”