The Primary Problem with American politics
Our system of nominating political candidates and determining who wins elections is one of primary causes of our dangerous ideological polarization.
The following is an excerpt from my second book Promoting Progress: A Radical New Agenda to Create Abundance for All. You can order prerelease e-books at a discounted price at my website, or you can purchase for full price on Amazon.
Other books in my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:
See my other articles on Electoral Reform:
The Primary Problem with American politics (this article)
To reform our policy, we must first reform our electoral system
The current American political system:
Concentrates political power into the hands of very liberal Democrats and very conservative Republicans
Highly restricts competition between political parties
Makes it very difficult for new parties to be formed and become competitive
Overcentralizes power into the hands of the federal government
Restricts the ability of local and state governments to experiment with different policies
Makes it very difficult to identify and implement policies that actually work.
Of particular concern is the declining electoral competition between Democrats and Republicans. Over 80% of Congressional seats are non-competitive with the winner known years before the election even takes place. This makes the vast majority of general elections meaningless.
What we have today in America is something strikingly similar to the rotten boroughs of pre-reform Britain. Rotten boroughs were the nickname given to electoral districts that were uncompetitive and had a tiny population of voters. Rotten boroughs were typically dominated by aristocrats and the gentry, who saw the Parliamentary seat as their birthright. Drawing public attention to these rotten boroughs helped parliamentarians to finally pass the Reform Act of 1832.
Now I admit that the causes of modern-day American rotten boroughs are very different from the causes of the ones in pre-reform Britain. British rotten boroughs tended to be under-populated rural areas. American rotten boroughs represent a similar number of Americans as other more competitive districts. The problem in the United States is that the winner is effectively determined even before the general election takes place. And those who make that decision are distinctly unrepresentative of voters, even those in their own district.
Primary Problem
With the general election being meaningless in more than 80% of the House races and the majority of Senate seats, this shifts the center of electoral competition to the primaries of the dominant party. In the 40% of the House seats with virtually guaranteed Democratic victory, the Democratic primary becomes the “real” election. And the same is true of the Republican districts.
In itself, this is not necessarily a bad thing. The main problem is that primary voters are highly unrepresentative of the American public. Primaries have extremely low turnout. In 2020, for example, only 8% of voting-age citizens participated in Congressional primaries. Part of the problem is that a full 129 dominant party primaries were uncontested (Unite America).
Worse, this small number of primary voters are highly unrepresentative of citizens overall, as they are dominated by ideologues. Very liberal voters dominate the Democratic primary, while very conservative voters dominate the Republican primary. The vast majority of voters who tend more toward the center have very little influence within party primaries.
Our partisan primary system, along with single-member districts, unintentionally gives power to a very unrepresentative group of voters:
Voters within uncompetitive districts are already more ideological than the rest of America. By ideological, I mean either more liberal or more conservative depending upon the district or state. For example, voters in San Francisco are far more liberal than the rest of America, while voters from Wyoming are far more conservative than the rest of America.
Voters registered to the dominant party are already more ideological than other voters in the district. For example, registered Democrats in San Francisco are more liberal than San Francisco voters in general.
Primary voters are even more ideological than other voters within their party. For example, Republican primary voters in Wyoming elections are far more conservative than other Wyoming Republicans.
When there is no incumbent in the dominant party in that district, there tends to be a large number of candidates scrambling for the opportunity to win a safe seat that gives them a long political career. This means that the winner often earns well under 50% of the vote.
By the time voters have been filtered four times by the factors listed above, 80% of House seats are effectively elected by a tiny number of unrepresentative primary voters. And it is this group of unrepresentative voters that candidates must win the support of to maintain a career in Congress.
Typical primary voters are far more representative of the most ideological 15% of voters on each side than of the American people overall. This gives a very small proportion of a small number of voters virtual veto power over Congressional legislation.
Extremely unrepresentative primary elections put 80% of Congress under tremendous pressure to maintain the party line on every single issue. One small transgression, for instance voting for a reasonable bipartisan compromise, can lead to a more committed activist challenging them in the party primaries in the next election. Because turnout in primaries is so low, it is relatively easy for a challenger to mount a grassroots campaign against the incumbent.
For this reason, most Congresspersons do not care what typical voters in their district think. Nor do they care what the American people think. Their biggest concern is what party activists within their district think. Those are the voters who will dominate the party primaries.
It is difficult for a Republican Congressperson elected from an uncompetitive district to be too conservative for their primary voters. It is simple, however, for a single instance of support for moderate legislation to end their political career. The same goes for Democratic Congresspersons in uncompetitive districts.
Thirty years ago it was very rare for an incumbent to lose a primary election, but now it has become much more common. It has been common enough that the word “primaried” has entered the political lexicon.
It is important to note that actual incumbent losses in the primaries are still relatively rare, but even just a few instances send a powerful message: toe the party line or else. Since 80% of incumbents face no real competition in the general election, they have every incentive to avoid offending primary voters and not to care about the rest of the voting spectrum.
While turnout in individual Presidential primaries is significantly higher than for Congressional primaries, most voters never get a chance to cast a meaningful vote. Typically even competitive party primaries are decided early in the calendar when only a small fraction of all states have voted.
Using the 2020 Democratic primary as an example, for all practical purposes Joe Biden wrapped up the nomination in the February 29th South Carolina primary. Up until and including that key primary, a mere 330,064 voters from 4 states voted for the future president. The remainder of the 2020 Democratic primaries were more like a coronation than a competitive election.
This means that the future president received votes from 0.12% of the total adult population of 258 million. And this is not an unusual primary in any way. Such low overall turnout is the rule in nominating the most powerful person in the Free World.
Single-Member Districts
Having a very liberal Democratic party and a very conservative Republican party is not necessarily a problem. Other nations also have fairly ideological parties. The vast majority of those nations, however, also have more moderate parties that voters can support.
The problem is that this ideological polarization is combined with an enduring two-party system. Since the first party system was founded early in the Republic, the American political system has been dominated by two parties.
And amazingly it has been the same two parties for more than 150 years. The Republican party was founded in 1854, while the Democratic party goes back even further. While interpretations vary, many political scientists believe the Democratic party to be the oldest voter-based political party in the world. Some trace the founding of the Democratic party to the 1830s, while others trace the party back to Thomas Jefferson over three decades earlier.
When put in the context of the rest of American society, this is an extraordinary level of institutional endurance. It is difficult to find another example of two competing institutions that have maintained an effective duopoly in American society for more than 150 years. Even the oldest and largest corporations in American history (Ford, General Motors, US Steel, Standard Oil, Microsoft, Apple) are young in comparison. And none of them maintained their dominance for more than a few decades.
A big part of the reason for the dominance of two parties is an electoral process based on single-member districts. Single-member districts are deliberately designed to represent the majority within a specific geographical area. The unintended outcome of such a system is a relatively stable two-party system.
Single-member districts interact with plurality voting to enhance the representation of the largest party. Plurality voting means that the candidate who wins the largest percentage of votes wins the election even if they fail to win a majority of the votes. While some states have separate run-off elections, these tend to have very low turnout so they really do not solve the problem.
Most readers might be surprised to learn that single-member districts and plurality voting are mentioned nowhere in the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution specifically designates that each state will have two Senators and the number of House seats will be determined by population, but there is no mention of electoral systems. Each state has the power to determine its electoral system. Over the last two centuries, states gradually aligned on single-member districts, more out of convenience than anything else.
Single-member districts functioned reasonably well for the vast majority of American history. Party leaders within each district effectively nominated candidates that they felt could win a majority vote within their district. For a long time, both parties had the incentive to nominate moderates who would appeal to swing voters.
The above was an excerpt from my second book Promoting Progress: A Radical New Agenda to Create Abundance for All. You can order e-books at a discounted price at my website, or you can purchase for full price on Amazon.
Other books in my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:
See my other articles on Electoral Reform:
The Primary Problem with American politics (this article)
To reform our policy, we must first reform our electoral system