On June 8th, California's voters passed Proposition 14, a measure that would end California's semi-closed primary system, replacing it with a system in which all primary voters receive a single ballot listing all candidates running for each office. The top two vote getters proceed to the fall election regardless of party. Supporters say that the "top two" primary is less polarizing and empowers moderate candidates who can have a real effect in a state legislature mired in gridlock and budgetary crisis. Critics of the measure say it undermines each party's right to determine its own candidates, and increases the influences of special interests by making primaries more competitive and thus more expensive.
Primary reform has been tried before in California and elsewhere. Eric McGhee, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, looked at these experiments to see how they affected partisanship in state politics.
Supporters of Prop 14 believe that it would end the partisan gridlock that they presume is drawing out California's painful fiscal crisis. So first of all, is the partisan gridlock voters perceive actually responsible for the budget mess?
Well it is in the sense that the members of the Legislature are very divided by party, and you need to get a 2/3 vote to pass the budget. And that means you need to get some Republicans voting with Democrats, you need to get a bipartisan coalition and these days that's virtually impossible. So the main argument for [Prop 14] is that we'll elect more moderates who would be willing to cross party lines to vote for all kinds of things, but the most important one would be the budget.
Would a more open primary end polarization?
I don't think so. It might elect a few more cross-party voting legislators, but I don't think it would make a significant difference. There's some evidence that it would have more impact on the Democratic side than on the Republican side, and if you're going to free up gridlock on the budget you need to get a few more Republican votes, not a few more Democratic votes. Looking both at California's experience with the blanket primary in 1998 and 2000 and the experience of other states, the largest effect I found was in California in the Assembly, the lower house of the legislature.
Any assumptions as to why just the Assembly?
You could make the case that in the Assembly you have a lot more races where a moderate could be elected, and there are term limits in the legislature so there are more open seats [in which] a non-incumbent could be voted in. Though I didn't find much evidence for that kind of incumbency effect. It's possible that if you allowed the system to play itself out over a number of election cycles that you might see more change over time.
Your research finds that there would be a small number of moderate legislators, but is there any evidence that these new moderate legislators would actually be more flexible when it comes to raising taxes or cutting spending?
What I looked at was broader measures of ideological party-voting: Chamber of Commerce scores, League of Conservation scores, Planned Parenthood scores. It's really hard to say [whether] changes on broad ideological scores translate into changes of behavior on the budget. My guess is that there's not going to be a big change on budget votes.
There's recent polling from Public Policy Polling that shows that Californians really dislike their politicians. Do you think that, for example, Carly Fiorina would be more popular if she had started off campaigning for all Californians rather than just Republicans?
I don't know that she's that unpopular. Would she be more centrist if she wasn't running in the primary? It's possible. The whole idea of a primary effect in politics assumes that what's making candidates run to the extremes is the composition of the electorate. You've got these closed primaries; they're filled with ideologues, so that's what's pulling these candidates to the left or to the right.
But candidates who are able to get their message out are the ones who are able to raise the most money from established interests, be they unions on the Democratic side or business on the Republican side. And the ones who are able to get the most organizational support or the most endorsements are the ones who take the most extreme or strident positions on issues. It was only when Carly Fiorina got a message out that she became successful and Tom Cambell didn't get a message out because he didn't have the money to do it. Meg Whitman won among moderates as much as she won among conservatives. And it's because she got a message out, she had more money than Poizner to get a message out.
There's no denying that party primaries cater to a more ideological voter, but it's not the voters that are creating the polarization. It's the organized interests that provide the money and the organizational support necessary to get the message out. And they have litmus tests: "We aren't going to support you unless you take X position on this issue." That's what's pulling people to the extremes more than anything else.
Prop 14 was opposed by both parties, and one of the reasons was a belief that Prop 14 would allow people to vote for the weaker candidate in their opponents' primary so that their own party would win. Is there any evidence that voters are that strategic?
No. There's a small handful who are doing that kind of mischief but by and large voters don't care enough to take the trouble. Even among those who care, they have to really care. They have to find a bunch of other people willing to do the same thing or it's going to be a wasted vote in itself.
