IMPACT OF THE BLANKET PRIMARY
Did the imposition of the blanket primary accomplish what experts and advocates predicted that it would? The results are mixed. In several respects, such as the level of participation and the cost of running campaigns, California's first blanket primary had modest or nonexistent effects. But in two other important respects, namely the level of crossover voting and the moderation of candidate ideology, the effects were more significant. To start with the small or nonexistent impacts, the blanket primary did not dramatically increase turnout in the 1998 California primary. Cho and Gaines (chapter 9) claim that there was roughly a 2.4 percent surge in primary turnout over the decade average of 27.4 percent. The 1998 blanket
In retrospect, this finding is not too surprising, since political science research has already uncovered many other factors to explain turnout, such as registration rules (e.g., same-day versus thirty-day close), the demographic makeup of the electorate, the quality of the candidates, and the like (see Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980). The blanket primary opened up new opportunities for independent voters, but it did not guarantee that they would be more motivated to take advantage of those choices. Given that the large number of initiatives and nonpartisan races on California's closed primary ballots has always provided a reason for nonpartisans to vote, the chance to participate in presidential nominations and other primary races may not have added much to the existing incentive for them to participate. This is not to imply that the new opportunities made no difference at all to independent voters. Those who turned out had more races to participate in. But judging from the data, the new system did not stimulate large numbers of previously nonvoting independents into voting.
Had the Supreme Court allowed California to continue using the blanket rules, Cho and Gaines suggest that there might have been an increase in nonpartisan voter registration, since the value of being a registered partisan was lessened by the new blanket rules. However, the possibility of an increase between 1998 and 2000 in the number of independents was probably undercut by the way in which the California state legislature handled the presidential primary question. In 1998, California voters rejected Proposition 3, a measure that would have created an exception to the blanket primary rules for presidential races. Subsequently, the California legislature passed an exemption to the blanket primary law that only counted the votes of registered partisans for the selection of official delegates to the national presidential nomination conventions. Since this in effect deprived independents and minor-party registrants of an opportunity to cast a meaningful vote for the most salient race, we cannot rule out the possibility that it discouraged voters from choosing nonpartisan status.
Cho and Gaines also find very modest changes in the level of electoral competitiveness and campaign spending before and after the introduction of the blanket primary. Asking whether the 1998 returns were more or less competitive than California's district normal votes (see chapter 9), they conclude that there was a small increase in competitiveness in California's
While it appears that the blanket primary strengthened incumbents by giving them access to supporters in all parties, one should bear in mind Baldassare's important point (chapter 4) that the 1998 election was fought at a time when voters were relatively content with conditions in California. The economy had recovered from the difficulties of the mid-nineties, and voters were not looking to shake things up by voting for unproven outsiders. Experienced candidates and familiar faces did well up and down the ballot. Therefore, it is difficult to parse out how much of this apparent incumbency advantage was the result of the new rules per se, and how much was also a reflection of the tenor of the times.
Cho and Gaines (chapter 9) also find that the blanket primary did not dramatically increase campaign costs, as many opponents had predicted. The opponents argued that since candidates had to appeal to a larger electorate—essentially the same voters they would face in November, rather than strictly voters registered in their own parties—campaign costs would increase considerably. Using a model that pools Congressional spending data from 1992–1998, they conclude that the change to the blanket primary did not significantly alter the proportion of individual contributions that were earmarked for or spent during the primary election.
Another change that some experts predicted was that the blanket primary would open up new opportunities for women, minority, and minorparty candidates. Caul and Tate suggest in chapter 12 that, at least for women, the blanket primary created few new opportunities. Indeed, they predicted that if anything, movement away from stronger party control might actually set the progress of female candidates back, not forward. Looking at the evidence, however, they conclude that there was no change in terms of the absolute numbers of women running in statewide races under the blanket and closed primary systems. At the same time, they did find that the women who ran under the blanket rules tended to be better qualified; that is, they had substantial personal political resources such as
Segura and Woods (chapter 13) are more positive about the effects of the blanket primary on Latinos, but in a very particular sense. They find that moderate Latino Republican candidates were more viable under the blanket primary. Because the blanket primary encourages crossover voting from independents and moderate Democrats, it increases the chances of moderate Republicans being elected. Also, it allows Latino voters in districts with uncontested Democratic primaries to support Republican Latino candidates. Interestingly, they found no such effects on the Democratic side, suggesting the peculiarity of the California Republican Party and its "Latino problem." Further, by empowering moderate Latino candidates, the blanket primary also presumably undercuts the incentive of the Republican Party to undertake confrontational politics. We will return to the general point about moderation shortly.
Collet (chapter 11) similarly sees that minor parties benefited marginally from the new rules, although it is important to note that they "benefited" only if one thinks of minor parties as electoral rather than as expressive parties. By an electoral party, we mean one that is trying to win the election (or swing election outcomes) and therefore adapts to voter demands. By comparison, an expressive party cares less about trying to win (recognizing that this is usually not an option anyway) and gives voice to ideas that would otherwise be ignored by the major parties. Collet finds evidence that the vote for almost all minor parties increased dramatically in the 1998 election. This, he claims, offers the hope of broadening the otherwise narrow base of these parties and moderating their politics. This, as Collet acknowledges, can be defined as a benefit if the goal of minor parties is to become more electorally competitive, but not if their goal is to act as a voice of conscience, principle, and innovation. This illustrates an important point about electoral rules: namely, that the effects sometimes can be both subtle and profound. Changing the rules in this case may actually change the role that minor parties play from one of conscience to one of electoral competitor, something that was not predicted or discussed in the Prop 198 campaign.
The more dramatic effects caused by the introduction of the blanket primary center on two points: first, the incentives for voters to cross back and forth across party lines, and second, the effects this may have on candidate positioning. With regard to the first point, a number of the chapters
First, it is clear that voters did use the opportunity to cross party lines. For instance, looking at absentee ballots in Los Angeles County, Salvanto and Wattenberg claim that only 45 percent of registered Democrats voted for Democrats only (i.e., a straight ticket), 40 percent of registered Republicans voted for Republicans only, and only 5 percent of minor-party registrants voted for minor-party candidates only. To put it another way, a majority of voters in Los Angeles County took the opportunity to split their ballots between parties. If doing something indicates liking it, clearly a majority of voters seem to like the new system. This might explain why Proposition 3, which sought to exempt the presidential primary from the blanket rules, failed in 1998.
Salvanto and Wattenberg also argue that voters behaved in the blanket primary very much as they do in general elections. So one conclusion we can draw is that the blanket primary allowed voters two rounds of essentially general election behavior. However, as Kousser shows, this does not mean that voters will make the same choices twice, even when they have the opportunity to do so. A significant number of voters who cross over to vote for a particular candidate in the primary return to their own party in the general election, for reasons we will discuss shortly. Kousser reports that what he calls the "stickiness factor" (i.e., the likelihood that a crossover voter will support the same candidate in the general election) varies greatly depending on the electoral circumstances. When voters leave their own contested primary to vote in another race that is less competitive, the stickiness factor is very high, varying from 90 percent for Republicans to 82 percent for Democrats. But when voters leave their own uncontested primary to participate in a more competitive one, the stickiness factor is more like 44 percent. Because of this, Kousser takes some issue with Salvanto and Wattenberg in that he finds similar patterns but higher rates of crossover voting in the primary than the general election.
The second point of consensus is that the propensity for crossover voting varies according to the electoral circumstances of a race—for example, which race is competitive in the primary, and who is likely to win in the general. Controlling for different strategic situations, Alvarezand Nagler (chapter 6) find that the level of crossover voting in five 1998 Assembly district races varied from a little over 1 percent of Democrats in a heavily minority Democratic seat, Assembly District 49, to 85.9 percent of Republicans in the same seat. Presumably, Republicans in that seat understood
This leads us to perhaps the greatest areas of scholarly disagreement in this volume—why did voters cross over, and why does the rate of crossover voting vary so much from race to race? One answer that each chapter rules out is widespread raiding. Only a small fraction of voters seems to be crossing over to vote for the weakest candidate in the other party in order to improve the chances of their preferred candidate. This can be inferred from the moderate ideology and partisanship of the cross-over voters (chapter 5), their pro-incumbency bias (chapter 7), the rank orderings that voters assigned to candidates (chapter 6), and the relatively high number of those who vote the same way in November and in the primary (chapter 8).
If mischief is not the primary reason, then what else motivates crossover voting? One answer seems to be the attraction of popular incumbents, as we mentioned earlier. But the deeper question, which is far more controversial and divides our authors, is the proportion of voters who are acting sincerely as compared to those who act strategically. Sincere voters are supporting their most preferred candidate, while strategic voters are choosing a candidate who is not their most preferred for various reasons. Since we have ruled out sabotage in most cases, the more common strategic motive is hedging or impact voting: voting for a second-choice candidate with a higher probability of winning, or picking the best of the candidates in the other party's primary so that if the preferred candidate does not win, the voter gets her second-best candidate. However, it is very hard to infer exactly how many voters fit into the sincere or hedging categories since they
Does it matter whether voters act strategically in the primary? In terms of the effects on candidate strategies, the answer is that it requires some adjustments of expectations. Candidates need to discount their expectations of how much of the crossover vote they can expect to retain in November according to the strategic circumstances they find themselves in. But this, by itself, poses no vital threat to democracy. It does illustrate a point of principle about political parties, however. If enough voters are strategic, it means that races can be determined by fortuitous factors such as whether the other party has a contested primary or not. An important question that is as yet unanswered is whether this promotes perverse elite behavior, such as parties trying to prevent competitive races in order to keep the other party's supporters from interfering in their nominations. Systems that promote manipulative elite behavior tend to have a short life in American politics, as the U.S. experience with cumulative and limited voting suggests.
The other important effect of the blanket primary is on candidate ideology. It is clear from the official ballot pamphlet arguments and the known preferences of Proposition 198's backers that this was the main motivation behind the blanket primary reform. Representative Tom Campbell and other moderate Republicans believed that the closed primary system kept the California Republican party captive of the right wing. As both the Gerber and Petrocik essays explain (chapters 10 and 14), Campbell's fears in this regard comport with the logic and evidence of political science. Since registered partisans are both more motivated to vote in primary elections and more ideologically polarized than the general electorate, candidates are forced to play to the ends of the ideological spectrum in order to win in a closed primary and then trim to the middle to be competitive in the November contest. Campbell's hope was that this structurally induced schizophrenia could be lessened with the help of nonpartisans and moderate members of other parties.
Gerber finds that the moderating effect on candidate ideology was minimal in the top-of-the-ticket races, but substantial in the state legislative races. Her statistical model for predicting the probability of nominating a moderate candidate for the State Assembly in 1996 and 1998 suggests that the odds were significantly higher in 1998, even after controlling for other factors such as district ideology, the presence of an extreme challenger, race type, and party. The fact that the Republicans did not nominate moderates
Petrocik agrees with Gerber that the new blanket rules were designed to moderate the parties, but argues that the result will instead be greater programmatic heterogeneity and hence less party cohesion. Using a specially designed survey that gave information about the strategic circumstances of a hypothetical race to some respondents but not to others, Petrocik concludes that the perceived hopelessness of a seat (e.g., by a Republican voter in a safe Democratic seat) greatly increased the odds of crossover voting. He then produces evidence that the types of moderate voters who will cross over tend to have more diverse policy attitudes, which causes him to speculate that this could ultimately lead to less party cohesion.