There is some controversy over what to call the various “top-X”/“jungle primary” electoral systems now in vogue. The National Conference of State Legislatures now offers the term “multi-party primary” with the following definition:
A small but growing number of states hold a single primary in which all candidates, regardless of party, are listed on a single ballot. States vary in the number of candidates who advance out of this primary to the general election…
Elections for Nebraska’s unicameral, nonpartisan legislature closely mirror this process except ballots do not identify the candidates’ party.
The space of politics is multidimensional. What we call “left” and “right” are negotiated positions.
Interest groups (broadly understood) do the negotiating. They are assumed to want control of government. They form coalitions to get it.
Every democracy has some coalition structure, even if it does not track party division.
‘Shifting coalitions’ lead to electoral reform: incumbent groups seeking insulation, out-of-power groups seeking realignment, or opposing groups seeking to discipline noncommittal players (a polarizing mode).
Electoral reform is change in any of five electoral-system components: assembly size, district magnitude, ballot type, allocation rules, and rules about nominations.
Two-party politics makes it tempting to cater to factions, not parties, when proposing and designing reforms. Witness the current emphasis on ballot type and nominations (ranked-choice, approval voting, nonpartisan primaries). Witness the unpopularity (outside political science) of allocation rules that presume party grouping (such as party-list proportional representation, including mixed-member).
In the past, reformers promoted single transferable vote (STV) and ranking generally in order to cater to factions, not parties.
In other countries, multiparty politics facilitates use of ranked-choice: giving voters understandable entities to rank, instructing voters on how to rank (vote management), regulating candidate entry (vote management), and generating political will to administer a complex system.
In the United States, ranked-choice reforms tended to last as long as the coalitions that imposed them.
Vote management was imperfect and slow to emerge. It usually involved a bipartisan coalition that sold itself in “good government” terms.
Due to vote management, STV produces winners who usually would be the same under open-list proportional representation (OLPR).
An exception is when the coalition structure shifts, such that some voters do not rank candidates in the way that party (or interest-group) leaders might want. Said voters are part of a coalition structure that is different from the prevailing one.
If the alternative coalition deprives “left” and “right” of control of government, they may join in blaming the electoral system. This can lead to a polarizing repeal episode.
Reasons for abandonment of majoritarian ranked-ballot rules are not yet well-understood. One theme in the literature is ranking truncation. Another is the production of surprise results. These may have reinforced each other: many voters not ranking very many choices, determined candidates capitalizing on this.
The repeal of early ranked-choice systems left in place features that had been needed to pass ranked-choice. These include nonpartisan ballots, numbered-post elections, and single-digit assemblies.
I am reproducing here a Tweet thread from last week:
I expect a two-serious-candidate equilibrium, with ballot exhaustion driven by the supply of hopeless candidates.
The basic logic comes from Cox (1997). Winning-minded elites will be thinking about the IRV round when deciding whom to back in the “final five” round.
That means we need to think about the strategic context of an IRV election, which will ‘contaminate’ the first round.
What does a winning-minded-elite do in an IRV election? They get together with other winning-minded-elites and coordinate on the person most likely to win.
It turns out that humans have routinized such coordination. The general term for this is “political party.”
It follows that ‘resources’ will not flow to hopeless candidates, leading us straight back to two-party equilibrium. Or, in lopsided districts, two-faction equilibrium.
I covered these issues in my Apr. 2021 review of The Politics Industry. That review included discussion of ‘nonpartisan IRV’ in a two-party-competitive city (Cleveland, 1913-19). TLDR: lots of ballot exhaustion, no independents elected.
People (like me) who oppose Final Five are aware of the dynamics above. Our worry, I think, is that all we’ll have done is weakened political parties even more.
…and we don’t know what the world would have looked like if all these nonpartisan elections had never been adopted. Small changes have big consequences… even if parties adapt to nonpartisan elections.
