How our primaries work, and how to fix them.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

Setting the table.

It’s no exaggeration to say the last few weeks of American politics have been unlike anything we’ve ever seen. 

No incumbent president running for re-election has ever dropped out of a race this late in the game, and the way Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Joe Biden — through backchannel lobbying and a virtual roll-call vote, buttressed by the support of Democratic voters — was entirely novel. It also shined a light on precisely how primary elections for both presidents and members of Congress work. Or, at least, how they’re supposed to.

Right now, our presidential system works like this: States typically hold primary elections or caucuses roughly six to nine months before the election. In primaries, voters (that's you) will show up to the polls and cast a ballot for the candidates of their choosing. In caucuses, meetings are run by political parties where candidates are chosen through secret ballots or by participants physically grouping themselves according to the candidate they support. Depending on what state you live in and what party you are registered with, you might participate in an open primary, a closed primary, a variation on one of the two, or a caucus.

In congressional elections, once a primary or caucus is held, the results are tallied and the winners advance to the general election. However, the process for presidential elections is a little different: Voters cast their ballots in a primary, the results are tallied, and then delegates (typically active members chosen by the party) are awarded to each candidate based on a complex set of rules that differ state by state.

In most cases, the people chosen to be delegates go to national party conventions to award their ballots to a candidate. There are two different kinds of delegates: pledged or bound delegates must support the candidate that won in the primary or caucus process, and unpledged and superdelegates can choose any candidate they want. In order to win a party nomination, candidates have to win a majority of all the delegates.

This system is what allowed Harris to capture the nomination after Biden dropped out, despite the fact that she did not win a single pledged delegate during the primary.

At both the congressional and presidential levels, though, there is a lot of angst about the way our electoral systems work. Today, we are going to explore these current systems, what critics of them say, the pros and cons of alternative systems, and our take on the best way forward.

The U.S. primary system

Whereas general elections are relatively straightforward, primary elections can be complicated, vary in form, and differ from state to state. Broadly, primaries are used to select which candidates will represent a political party in a general election. Accordingly, the term “primary election” is a bit of a misnomer, because the winner of a primary isn’t actually elected to any position; instead, they simply secure their party’s nomination. 

In presidential elections, the two major parties — Republicans and Democrats — have their own rules governing how many delegates a candidate needs to win to become the nominee, but both assign delegates based on the results of primaries held in each state. Smaller parties, like the Libertarian Party and the Green Party, have their own nominating rules. 

Primaries are administered by state and local election offices on behalf of the political parties, and state law determines the type of primary that’s used. Here are the different primary formats for state-level races, along with the number of states that use them:

• Closed: A voter must register with one of the parties to participate in that party’s primary, and they may only vote for members of that party. Seven states have closed primaries.
• Semi-closed or open to unaffiliated voters: A voter who is registered with either party can only cast their vote in that party’s primary, but those without a party affiliation can pick which party’s primary they want to cast their ballot in (typically by declaring their party preference at the polls). 16 states have semi-closed primaries.
• Partially open: Any voter is allowed to cast their ballot in the primary of their choosing regardless of party affiliation, but if they choose to participate in the primary of the party they are not registered in, their registration may be automatically switched to that party. Six states have partially open primaries. 
• Open: A voter with any political affiliation (or no affiliation) is eligible to cast their ballot for any party, but they may only participate in one party’s primary. Twenty states have open primaries.
• Top-two: Voters participate in a single primary election in which all candidates (regardless of party) are on the ballot. The top two vote-getters move on to the general election, even if they are from the same party. Two states (California and Washington) have a top-two system. Additionally, Louisiana, Nebraska, and Alaska have primaries modeled after the top-two system.

For presidential elections, some states choose to make small changes to their primary process; in other cases, they are forced to. In California, for example, the top-two system used for state races is incompatible with the nature of a presidential primary, so the state has adopted a partially closed system for presidential contests. Overall, the primary systems used for state and presidential elections match in 39 states and differ in 11. Among those that differ, seven have laws that are more restrictive for the presidential primary than the state primary. Additionally, five states use caucus systems instead of presidential primaries, though caucuses still fall into the same categories (open, closed, etc.).

The history of political parties.

 A dual-party system has persisted throughout much of U.S. history, but the two leading parties have not always been Republicans and Democrats. Many of the founding fathers — like George Washington and Alexander Hamilton — vehemently opposed the idea of political parties, fearing they would undermine the principles of American democracy and destabilize the government. But the U.S.’s winner-takes-all, single-member district system for electing representatives likely ensured that two political parties would come to dominate; Duverger's law (named after French political scientist Maurice Duverger) suggests that “the simple majority, single ballot system favours the two‐party system” because voters are inclined to only support candidates they think have a chance of winning outright, which reduces the appeal of third parties.

The emergence of a two-party system in America’s early days, then, was no surprise. Initially, the opposing parties were Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, which morphed into Whigs and Democrats after Andrew Jackson’s election, and morphed again into Republicans and Democrats after the Whigs split over the issue of slavery. From the middle of the 19th century on, Republicans and Democrats have remained the two major parties in the U.S., though their political positions and bases of support have evolved.  

Although states have different types of primaries, most of those differences are structured around rules for participating based on party affiliation. As such, the two-party system is baked into primaries; voters choose to participate in the Republican or Democratic primary in their state, and those elections elevate the two main candidates for the general election (with some exceptions).

The history of primaries.