[1337p337]

(D)s, (R)s, and other letters in parentheses next to names are the sort of things that influence how people vote, and in articles like this, they affect future votes.

That said, it is somewhat sad that the informed citizen is a more rare voter than they used to be. The ballot in my state was so long that I had to make a cheat sheet to avoid having to memorize all of the names. I suspect that for non-partisan offices, a lot of people did just vote for names they like. If elections weren't so costly, it might be objectively better to hold local, state, and federal elections on different days, so that people who show up to vote for a president or a governor don't just mark the rest of their ballot without knowing who they're voting for.

These are all senators, though, so it can be assumed that they were mostly elected by people who at least had heard of them.