California has a ballot initiative for an open primary, of the top two variety. It has been asserted by the authors that this would alleviate the more extreme of the partisan politics currently infecting our elections. While I think this is a worthy goal, I don’t see how this change would in any way achieve that goal and in fact, I think it would exacerbate rather than alleviate it. If we assume as a given that primary elections:
a. Have less turn out than general elections
b. Skew conservative (i.e. more older voters, who trend towards conservatism)
c. Skew partisan. The most active voters are those more involved in the party politics.
Now, if you want to argue those “given” statements (I’m up for it if you are) this is going to take a little longer, but accepting those as true, how does changing it to a open primary not push both parties to further extremism. Look at what’s happening nationwide as the Tea Party are pushing the Republicans right, while Move-On is busy pushing Democrats left*. Where does the magical less partisan pixie dust get applied?
I’m aware that this represents a false equivalence to some, rather than fight that battle too; I’ve tried to craft as neutral an OP as possible.
I don’t see it. Currently republican tend to the right in the primary then move towards center in the general, while the democrats do the opposite. That’s because both parties are courting there base in the primaries. Now this proposal I assume involves stripping the candidates of the D or R designation and running off the top two in the general. How is that different from what we have now since the pool of voters is unchanged? The only difference I see is that now you’d give even more power to the reactionaries and ideologues.
Candidates will still have party affiliation if they want it. In fact, I would guess that the major parties will have nominating conventions (or caucuses or something) so that their votes are not split in the open primary.
The important difference with this new system is that non-partisan voters will be able to vote. I think in California the two majors parties only account for something like 60% of registered voters. So while the partisan candidates may run towards their party’s extremes, if they aren’t careful, they might miss the cut for the general election. A more centrist candidate who failed to get his party’s nomination can still run unaffiliated in the open primary, where he may get enough votes (from non-partisan and moderate partisan voters) to make to the general election.
If the major parties always picked centrist candidates, then the new system doesn’t change anything. However, in California at least, the parties have systematically failed to choose moderate candidates.
In California, the Republican primary is closed but the Democratic primary is open. I know, I switched from Republican to Democrat.
Low turnout in primaries today is often the case because of lack of competition. I’m a Democrat, and Barbara Boxer and Jerry Brown are basically running unopposed. I vote in every election, but I can see many people not bothering for the contested lower level positions.
Given that candidates in primaries today are more or less extreme, saying that they may have to move to the center to campaign doesn’t mean that a more extreme candidate elected by the true believers wouldn’t move right back to the fringes after being elected. Look at what happened to “compassionate conservatism” after the campaign in 2000. So if an open primary gets more centrist candidates nominated, it would be a good thing.
Whatever Arnie’s failings as a governor are, and tney are legion, I think it is clear that he was more centrist than some picks from having been originally elected in a more or less open election.
The frothing at the mouth in the Republican Gubernatorial primary this year “I kicked five puppies.” “I kicked 10, you damn liberal!” is plenty of reason to back an open primary.
In a system where the partys’ primaries are separate, a Republican need only appeal to Republicans, and a Democrat need only appeal to Democrats. In an open-primary system, all candidates need to appeal to all voters (or at least, a candidate who does so is going to beat one who doesn’t).
Ok. Either I’m dense or people are not following what I’m asking. I’m willing to accede it’s the former rather than the latter. I am sold on the idea of appealing to moderates and independents to take the extremism out of the equation. I want to know how an open primary gets to that result. Here’s what I see amongst primary voters (nice Imagery by the way Voyager). In fact let’s use the same people for election purposes:
In the California Governor’s race we have 20 or co candidates running: Due to the political parties, money, and other reasons, we can more or less limit the race to Jerry Brown (D), on the left and Steve Poisner (R) and Meg Whitman (R) who as you’ve pointed out are currently competing in a puppy kicking contest to see which one faces Jerry on the right. Now you guys seem to be saying in an open primary, via some undefined mechanism, instead of what we have now all three would be trying to appeal to the center. On what basis are you making such a claim? How does an open primary not result in Jerry Brown joining the pile on?
What I can see is campaigns costing a ton more money. I can see even more influence by big business to fund their candidates. I can see more rhetoric, more extremism and more ideological purity contests intraparty. What I don’t see is any hint of a source of moderation. If I owned a media company, I can see the appeal. I don’t see the appeal if I’m a voter.
So what? Independents and Moderates don’t seem to vote in the Primary anyway, at least in heavy enough numbers to matter; they can be safely ignored as they are now.
Not necessarily. It also creates the opportunity to sabotage the other party’s primary by voting for whoever you think has the worst chances against your candidate.
Can you clarify this? Are you saying that republicans tend to be more extreme in primaries and more moderate in general elections AND that democrats tend to be more moderate in primaries and more extreme in general elections? That’s how I read it but that doesn’t make sense to me.
I think you meant to say that both parties tend to be more extreme in primaries and move to the center in general elections. Is that right?
Brown would be involved in campaigning for the primary. He should be. He’s basically unopposed in his party so he needs do nothing and he’s on the general election ballot. For Brown this type of change would probably have little effect. He’s polling well and would likely end up on the ballot at the general election.
Look at what it does between Poisner and Whitman. In a closed primary, who are they trying to appeal to? The pool of voters are all registered republicans. The winner is the one who can appear “most republican”. They compete by saying the other person is a liberal, they try to out-conservative the other person. There is no appeal to moderates there. In an open primary however, the people choosing would be composed of all voters. Whitman stating that she hates brown people (I made that up) may go over with some of the republican base, but it wont with a lot of other people who can now participate in the primary. The result is candidates that dont have broad appeal will not move forward. Poisner coming out and saying that he worships at the alter of the assault rifle may win him some votes of the CA gunnies, but it will do him no favors with large swathes of the voters. They both need to have moderate appeal.
More or less. I’m saying that in the primaries both parties have to campaign to their repsective extremists. Afterwards they both campaign to the general electorate for November.
I think this is where you guys are losing me. What makes you think this is so? IMO (and I have just as much evidence or more as you do) Primary voters tend to be the respective parties faithful. What reason does Meg have to Court Jerry’s voters that she knows she won’t get?
If he hates the darkies now, he’ll still have to hate them in November. This is 2010. Anything Steve Poisner says now is available for all of eternity (or as long as the internet last anyway) to be used against him. What possible motive does the fact that now I can see his, Meg and Jerry’s name at the same time give him to move to the center?
I don’t think it will make much difference in statewide elections. Where it will make a difference is in those legislative districts that are stacked to strongly favor one party over the other. There are many districts where the winner of the primary for the dominant party is pretty much a shoe-in for the seat, and there’s no incentive at all to run back to the center. With an open primary, a more moderate candidate who can’t win their party’s primary may be able to win enough votes from independents or the opposite party to get elected.
It may not be enough to fix the current mess, but I think it’s worth a try.
California passed a ballot measure instituting redistricting by commission, so there should be fewer districts designed to produce particular results for the parties.
I think that the theory of nonpartisan primaries is that, in partisan primaries, the moderates are split between the two separate primaries, so that it’s not strategically useful to go after them, whereas in a nonpartisan primary, going for the center can be a viable strategy. In other words, Joe Centrist now has to pick a party knowing that he’s to the right of the majority of Democrats and to the left of the majority of Republicans, even though his views line up well with that of the population as a whole. He’d got a problem in a partisan primary, but a nonpartisan primary should suit him well.
I live in Washington state, which has a top-two primary system (which is what I think Prop 14 is actually calling for) which is different than a blanket primary and very, very different than open primary.
From my incredibly biased position (I miss the blanket primary), the answer is that “it depends.” Here, for that incredibly short time that we were stuck with an open primary, things were worse than in the blanket years or will be this year (of course, who knows what the tea partiers are going to do. It’ll be fun to watch.)
Here, there are a huge percentage of people who (rightly or wrongly) consider themselves independents & moderates. Enough of them do vote across party lines and they do show up for the primaries that it was nigh impossible to make it onto the general election ballot for statewide office without them. Moderates tended to do pretty well; the extremists, not so much.
In an open primary, the candidates play to the extremists. When two candidates are trying to play “I have better left-wing credentials than they do,” because the only people who can vote are people who consider themselves left-wing, the candidates have to leave the center behind.
I think that cause and effect may be mixed up. Moderates don’t vote in closed primaries because they don’t want to affiliate with a particular party. This means that the ones that vote in open primaries have less pull. And the two opponents are usually pushing towards extremism. That cuts down the ones that care even more. So you get this small subset that would want to vote, and they are a minority and know their vote won’t matter.
In other words, if all primaries were open, all it would take is one moderate candidate (who might even try it just because s/he’s losing), who then would appeal to these people who don’t want to associate with a particular party, thus meaning those were already open would have more say, meaning the subset might be larger, and thus actually hold at least some level of influence.
I think it’s premature to assume moderates absolutely won’t vote in the proposed system just because they don’t vote in this one.
There might be 20 candidates officially running, but in reality there are only 3. One of the problems Republicans have had lately is that their primary chooses a relatively extreme candidate who loses to a more moderate Democrat in the full election. Some areas of California are extremely conservative, but the population centers aren’t for the most part.
As an example of how the primary system fosters extremism, Whitman has declined in the polls because she opposes the Arizona anti-immigrant law. Given the number of Latinos in this state, that is a very reasonable position for the general election, but apparently not for the primary.
As for money, Whitman and Poizner are spending $90 million on the primary alone (mostly Whitman) so I don’t see how it could get much worse. True, Brown isn’t spending much at the moment, but he would be if the primary had been contested.
I don’t think it likely that we’d have open primaries with scads of realistic candidates, at least not in the long run. Those candidates without much support will fall in the polls, not get money, and have to drop out - just like what happens in widely contested presidential nomination campaigns. Extremist candidates appeal to a niche, and while they may stay in, they won’t get nominated. Non-extremist candidates will have to consider whether to compete with extremist candidates for the small extremist population, or go for the broader center - I suspect they will do the latter.
Remember also that every voter will have the chance to vote against that idiot from the other party in this scenario. Today I suspect many think that all plausible candidates are acceptable, and so voting is not required.
You’re assuming that the candidates are ideologically equivalent. If the primary produces extremists on both sides, then you wind up with an extremist winner guaranteed. We also have to worry about how someone will actually govern after winning. Remember compassionate conservatism? Nice campaign slogan - never actually happened.
No, they must appeal to the party faithful who care enough to come out and vote in a primary, and these people tend to be more activist than average.
Well, Meg is in trouble because she said she doesn’t hate brown people. (Joking, kind of.) There are lots of independents still, who are not factors in the Republican primary at all. They are not all automatically Jerry Brown fans. Appealing to them will either moderate the campaign or cause a more moderate candidate to make it into the runoff.
Say we have the same slate as today, and 30% R, 30% D, and 40% I. Brown will get the 30%D, and will be in the final runoff automatically. Today the 15% of voters who actually vote in the R primary skews right, so that is where the candidates come. If moderate Is who might not like Brown vote, they’ll vote for the more centrist of the R candidates, and that will more than counterbalance the trend towards extremism in party primary voters.
Yes, but you also have to secure enough votes for your preferred candidate to ensure that the opposing party doesn’t sabotage your candidate as well. The only way you can really spare enough votes to do so is if your candidate was going to win the general election anyway.
What an open primary does allow you to do, is if you’re say a moderate-leaning R in California and the primary choices are:
Extremist-D candidate with 51% polling of Democrats
Moderate-D candidate with 49% polling of Democrats
Moderate-R candidate with 20% polling of Republicans
Extremist-R candidate with 80% polling of Republicans(and no chance of winning the general)
Even though candidate 3. is your preference, an open primary allows you to vote for candidate 2 and end up with someone you can be content with.
Additionally, if you’re say a moderate-leaning D in California but hate extremist candidates, and the primary choices are:
Extremist-D candidate with 60% polling of Democrats
Moderate-D candidate with 40% polling of Democrats
Moderate-R candidate with 49% polling of Republicans
Extremist-R candidate with 51% polling of Republicans(and no chance of winning the general)
an open primary allows you to vote for candidate 3, and hopefully result in a competitve moderate candidate in the general.