I don’t see how. You can run in the Democratic primary, but if you lose you can’t list your name on the November ballot. Ditto for the Republican primary. Or you can skip the primary altogether and run as an independent candidate in November. Or you can get nominated by the Green party and list your name in November.
What you can’t do is lose a Republican primary, run in November, split the support on your side of the aisle, and hand victory to a Democrat who receives as little as 34% of the vote. Now again, I’d prefer proportional representation but given FPTP, I can’t see anything wrong with such a rule. Jungle primaries sound ok to me as well.
My characterization of FPTP is well grounded in theory, well grounded in US practice… and falsified by the Canadian and UK experiences. So I agree there’s something odd going on. I’m just not sure what, but I can’t see how ballot access rules are affecting matters. There are plenty of places with meaningless 3rd party candidates on US ballots. Almost all are fringey. Puzzling.
Brat doesn’t want to be pigeonholed:
[QUOTE=David Brat]
The national media is way too interested in trying to put people into little cubbyholes, and it looks like from the results of the vote I didn’t belong in a little cubbyhole. They’re trying to have their nice little jockeying, gamesmanship-type columns, ‘Dave the Tea Partier,’ but the evidence shows we surpassed our goals by a tremendous margin.
…
I ran on Republican principles, and those principles are what matter.
[/QUOTE]
That’s some pretty impressive back-peddling. Among modern conservatives any sort of verbal contortion tastes great alongside a helping of media bashing. I think Brat will fit in fine in Washington. Dave Brat: Quit Calling Me ‘Dave The Tea Partier’ - TPM – Talking Points Memo
Assuming that Brat is both the Republican nominee and the victor in the special election, that would give him seniority over the other new Reps from the mid-terms. It’s just power politics at work, that’s all.
I’ll tell you though, I’d find it amusing as all hell if the Tea Party, which supposedly rejects politics as usual, votes for the Democrat in the special election, and Brat in the general.
Well the primary season is almost over and 303 out of 306 incumbents won their renomination this cycle. Some say that this makes a congressional seat the safest job in the country but I accentuate the positive and offer warm congratulations to the 99.0%.
As we know, Eric Cantor didn’t make the cut: perhaps it would have helped if he was in his district on election day. Well better luck next time. As noted above he will be resigning on August 18th and reportedly "his mind already began to focus on the next part of his life,” as soon as he lost. He’s a real go-getter and leaving his district without a representative for 2 months and a half shouldn’t be a big deal. Struck by defeat, he has had time to reflect on the important things in life, specifically Eric Cantor.
The financial sector in particular apparently beckons.
Nate Silver argues that Republican incumbents are nonetheless vulnerable: their margin of victory during the primaries has been in decline.
Nate Silver: [INDENT]An NFL team that wins a number of games by less than a touchdown might get banner headlines for its clutch performance. But a team’s record in close games is mostly just luck. A football team that thrives on winning close games is likely to see its luck revert to the mean and start losing its fair share of them. The same is true in baseball, basketball and most other sports.
…In fact, the average share of the primary vote received by Republican incumbent senators so far this year is 73 percent. Not only is that lower than 2004 through 2008, when incumbents averaged 89 percent of the vote — it’s also lower than 2010 and 2012, the years when the tea party was supposedly in ascendency, when GOP incumbents got an average of 78 percent. [/INDENT]
Look for the GOP incumbents to start using the same tricks on Tea Party challengers that they use on Democrats: voter suppression, gerrymandering and electoral dirty tricks. These tricks work best in close elections. The problem is, it will probably be much harder to gerrymander seats so that they’ll be safe from the Tea Party AND Democrats and still hold on to a majority in Congress. Excuse me, while I wipe a few crocodile tears from my eyes over the plight of the GOP.
How would you gerrymander for that? Gerrymandering is only really possible if you can identify the demographics. I’m not sure there is a major demographic difference between a Tea Party and non-Tea Party Republican.
You could do surveys on the issues and use the responses for your gerrymandering. I don’t know if that would even work … clearly the GOP has its work cut out for it. Excuse me, another crocodile tear to wipe away.
Actually it’s pretty easy. An 80% Republican district will have more Tea Partiers than a 50% Republican district. If Republican incumbents fear their right flank more than their left (and in some cases they should) they might just gerrymander towards a more electorally balanced district. They would give themselves more competition in November in exchange for less competition during the primary.
If they want to be more sophisticated, voting behavior can be measured at the precinct level and precincts are pretty small. You only need one tea party/incumbent primary to gather useful data.