Democrats should junk the primaries: Here’s why

After one presidential defeat, two impeachments, two criminal indictments and, possibly, two more to come, Donald Trump has learned nothing. He still insists he won the 2020 election – by a landslide – and that he’s the victim of a vast deep-state conspiracy bent on his destruction.  

It’s hard to believe: A plainly delusional 77-year old is making a third run for the White House on an explicit platform of wreaking revenge on his political enemies. Yet somehow he’s outpacing his saner Republican rivals and, in some polls, is even with President Joe Biden.  

This is nuts, and it poses a riddle for Biden and the Democrats: Why aren’t they 20 points ahead? Why can’t they rally a solid majority of Americans to protect our constitutional democracy against an incendiary demagogue? 

Part of the answer lies in Trump’s hold on white working-class voters, who believe he’s fighting to preserve their idea of America. Another is found in Democrats’ leftward march over the past two decades, which has made it hard for them to win across America’s pragmatic center.  

According to Gallup, the share of Democrats identifying as liberal rose to a record 54 percent last year. But the country hasn’t moved with them: Only 26 percent of U.S. voters say they are liberal, unchanged since the 1990s.  

Nonetheless, many Democrats convinced themselves that America’s changing demographics would inevitably yield a new progressive majority. No longer would the party have to chase after culturally conservative rural voters or fiscally conservative suburban swing voters. By embracing a bold and unabashedly progressive agenda, they could simply wait for droves of young and diverse voters to put them over the top.  

They are still waiting. Worse, by focusing narrowly on “energizing the base,” Democrats have allowed their powers of political persuasion to atrophy. Mesmerized by progressive shibboleths not shared by most voters, they’ve forgotten how to speak to middle America.  

A key reason is the physical segregation of Democratic and Republican voters. Democrats cluster in big urban centers and older, close-in suburbs; Republicans dominate exurbs, small towns and rural areas. That’s led to a drastic decline in competitive races for public office.   

Many observers think partisan gerrymandering is the chief culprit here. Not so, says David Wasserman of the Cook Report. His research finds that geographical self-sorting rather than redistricting accounts for most (58 percent) of the competitive decline.     

Cook’s “Partisan Voting Index” (PVI) measures how a district or state performs at the presidential level compared to the national result. A score of R+5, for example, means that a district in recent presidential elections voted 5 points more Republican than the nation as a whole.   

Wasserman reports that the number of swing House districts — those that have PVI scores between D+5 and R+5 — has been roughly cut in half since 1999, from 164 to just 82. Meanwhile, The PVI scores of the media House Republican and Democratic districts have about doubled.

The proliferation of more homogeneous districts means that most House members rarely face a competitive challenge from the other party. In fact, the typical incumbent in an ostensibly “safe seat” runs a bigger risk today of losing in a primary than a general election.  

This dynamic empowers the most dogmatic and sectarian voices within both parties. Activists on the left and right routinely threaten to “primary” House and Senate incumbents who don’t toe their ideological lines. 

“Because primaries have traditionally been low-turnout events, competing in them is cheaper than contesting a general election,” notes Elaine Kamarck, a leading scholar of primary politics at the Brookings Institution. “It is no surprise therefore that primaries — especially congressional primaries — have become the preeminent vehicle for activists seeking to affect their party’s meaning.”  

Democrats need to break free from this self-perpetuating doom loop of ideological narrowing and calcification. Unlike the GOP, which quails before Trump’s MAGA legions, they still have a large moderate wing. They should consult it to reorient their economic and social policies around the aspirations and values of independents, working-class voters and college-educated Republicans who can’t abide Trump.  

Changing how they select their candidates also would help. Specifically, Democrats should replace primaries with ranked-choice voting. It comes in various forms, but the basic idea is to give voters the ability to rank their choices in order of preference. If no candidate wins a majority of votes, the last-place candidate gets eliminated and their supporter’s votes are reallocated to their second choice. That process continues until a candidate gets over 50 percent.  

Rank choice voting gives candidates a strong incentive to court as many voters as they can rather than targeting only true believers. This would work against Trump-style polarizers and discourage candidates from running stridently negative campaigns. 

Unlike our present “first past the post” system, where candidates can win with a plurality of the vote, rank choice voting ensures that all votes count and that the majority rules. It would likely improve voter turnout and save parties the expense of run-off elections.  

Maine and Alaska have rank-choice voting, which has enabled them to send independent voices to Washington. Nevada voters last year gave preliminary approval to rank choice voting, which also has been adopted by a growing number of cities, counties and states.  

By junking their antiquated primary systems, which magnify the influence of ideologues and activists, Democrats could strike a blow against extreme polarization and negative partisanship. And recovering the lost art of political persuasion would help them rally the solid majority of Americans who want to prevent Trump from vandalizing our democracy.

Will Marshall is president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI).