Here’s an absurd experiment, but an interesting one nonetheless.
Let’s apply the weird top-two California primary method to the 2016 primaries and see what happens: Donald Trump likely would not be President.
California’s no-party top-two primary system is supposed to upend the stranglehold the two parties – Republicans and Democrats – have on American politics and give more moderate candidates a shot at office. In California, it’s led to a fair number of Democrat vs. Democrat races in recent Novembers.
At the national level, because of the patchwork of ballot access laws and the byzantine nominating systems, the parties basically have the presidential landscape sewn up.
That’s not the way the original Founders envisioned it; the Constitution, as originally written, had a sort of top-two format because the President was the top vote-getter in the Electoral College and the vice president was whoever got second place. That only lasted three presidents and one contested election (1800 between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr) before the 12th Amendment was ratified.
Imagining a President Trump having to contend with Vice President Clinton makes the current system make more sense. On the other hand, the only way Bernie Sanders can make a big impact is by running in the Democratic primary even though he isn’t a Democrat.
The party system is imperfect. It’s also what we got.
But they’re trying to change things in California for every office except President. It’s actually very simple: Parties don’t hold primaries before a general election, but rather the top two finishers on Primary Day – regardless of party – square off on Election Day.
In a deep blue state like California, that’s led to intraparty fights on Election Day, and the likelihood of few Republicans on statewide ballots. The party will have to adapt to overcome.
Read Harry Enten’s piece on the June 5 primary coming up: “California’s top two primary could be a disaster for Democrats. It could be a disaster for Republicans as well.”
Maeve Reston and Ronald Brownstein have also written excellent pieces about the unintended consequences from the system this year.
And that’s kind of the point.
The California system, which fed-up voters approved in a ballot initiative in 2010 and which is also in place in Washington state and for legislative elections in Nebraska, has plenty of detractors, many of whom argue conservatives in California unfairly have no option on Election Day.
But that assumes a binary choice – red or blue – is better for voters than a more nuanced two-step approach.
Supporters – and there are those who want to implement the system at the national level – say the system gives people more choices and de-emphasizes party in favor of policy.
Don’t look for it at the national level any time soon, particularly if it costs Democrats a few purple seats they’re banking on in Orange County.
Applying the California system to 2016
But it’s an interesting – if only academic exercise – to wonder how it would work at the national level.
Let’s pretend it had been in place in 2016 and there was a national, top-two, non-party primary.
Strictly by numbers taken from the 2016 primary process, it would have still been Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump on Election Day, but barely. Clinton got 17,174,180 primary votes, while Donald Trump received 13,310,471 primary votes. Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders finished with 13,243,376 primary votes.
It’s an imperfect comparison, obviously, because Trump locked up his nomination much earlier than Clinton did. That likely depressed turnout in some states with primaries later on the calendar, like California. And the votes in some states are smaller than they might have been because of caucuses or state nominating conventions.
So a strict comparison of primary votes doesn’t work.
Another way to reimagine 2016, would be with a state-by-state two-two primary system. And this is kind of interesting.
If you compare primary and caucus votes as tabulated in 2016 on Election Atlas for Republicans and Democrats and break them down by state, there would have been no Republican on the ballot in 18 states, including a number of those Rust Belt and Midwestern states that eventually delivered the White House House to Trump, like Michigan and Wisconsin.
The Ohio example
There would have been no Democrat on the ballot in Ohio, where Gov. John Kasich banked his centrist 2016 run on gaining momentum in his own state. He won the GOP primary with 956,762 votes, Trump got second with 727,585. Clinton won the Democratic primary with 679,266. Trump ended up winning the state in November, but it’s hard to believe he would have won against the more moderate Kasich, especially since primary voters in the state could vote however they wanted. In fact, according to exit polls, 8% of voters in the Republican primary were Democrats. They voted for Kasich with 56%. A much larger 28% of the voters in the Republican primary were independents, and Kasich was their top vote-getter too.
Fewer Republicans – 2% – voted in the Democratic primary in Ohio. But 24% of the Democratic primary voters were independents and they supported Sanders overwhelmingly, according to exit polls. Clinton won Democrats voting in the Democratic primary by a similarly large margin. That suggests the open primary did bring new people into the fold, and in each primary they voted not for the party’s frontrunner, but for Kasich and Sanders.
In another large state, Texas, Trump would not have made it to November in a California-style primary. Ted Cruz won the GOP primary there with 1,239,370 votes and Clinton won the Democratic primary with 935,080 votes. Trump had less than 800,000.
In California, Clinton and Sanders were the top two vote-getters. Granted, the primary there was held after Trump had already sewn up the GOP nomination, so it’s possible and likely that fewer of his supporters showed up.
There are 23 states with open or semi-open presidential primaries (primary voters can vote in either party’s primary).
Of those, looking at 2016 results, six would have had an all-Democrat election day. Three would have had an all-Republican election day. It’s hard to imagine a Trump victory if he was off the ballot in so many large states and some of those that carried him to victory, like Michigan.
This is a silly exercise. As Trump has pointed out, if the rules had been different, he would have campaigned differently. But so would Democrats. And it’s not taking into account what would ultimately happen if no candidate got to 270 electoral votes, which is more likely if states selected more primary winners.
But it’s interesting to think about different ways the process could occur, especially if you’re frustrated by the two-party system.
Visualizations by Joyce Tseng