Jungle Primaries

Good question. First I heard of the "jungle primaries" was last night and I think it's crazy.

"Jungle primaries" need to be abolished.

What would happen in these states if a party decided to select their candidates with caucuses?

Would the candidates then be barred from appearing on the ballot in the general election?

Also a good question. Caucuses was the way parties have selected their candidates for most of American history.

Why do you say that? Louisiana has used a top two system for decades and no one complained. In a state where one party is completely dominant like California, it makes perfect sense. The top two system allows people from the non-dominant party to have more of a say in who gets elected and tends to prevent extremists from getting elected.

Caucuses should also be abolished.

I think a party should be allowed to caucus if they damn well want to.

This time California luckily avoided a catastrophe. Let's use a hypothetical scenario for a "jungle primary". Let's say the democrats have 20 candidates running for one seat and the republicans have 2 candidates running for that exact same seat. Let's say the two republicans get 20 percent each. Let's say the 20 democrats get 3 percent each. In this hypothetical scenario the democratic party would get 60 percent of the primary votes and the republican party would get 40 percent of the primary votes. The party that get the most primary votes would have no one on the ballot in the general election, while the party that has the least amount of primary votes would have two candidates be on the ballots running against each other for that one seat. In this hypothetical scenario there would be a republican running against another republican in the general election for that one seat.

The political parties do caucus if they chose to do so. I just personally think caucuses should be abolished. I personally believe that every state should only be primaries and not caucuses.

I think political parties should be private organizations. If you want to start a Guru party and have the nomination decided by the leaders only, I say go ahead. Caucuses decided the nominations for most of American history so I don't see why they should be outlawed.

Democracy takes place on Election Day. You can have whatever nominating system you choose before that.

Would you be okay with knocking off the super delegates?

I regret not attending Michigan's 2012 Democratic caucus.

I didn't bother at the time because there was really nothing to decide. They were just going to renominate Obama by general acclimation. But in retrospect I think it would have been neat to experience a caucus.

That's an unfortunate choice of terms...

But why on earth would twenty members of one party run for office? The only reason we are taking "catastrophe" in California is because enthusiasm is so high for Democrats in California right now. As mentioned earlier, Louisiana has been running a top two system for decades and no catastrophes. (I'm not sure why the press is acting like California's system is something new and radical when another state has been doing it for so long.) A more likely situation and one that is occuring right now in several California races is that two Democrats head the ballot in the runoff. I suppose that could be considered a Republican catastrophe, but when you only have a quarter of the statewide registration, it's hard to say you deserve a candidate in the runoff every time. In those districts, non-Democrats now get a say in the final election. The can't vote for their favorite party, but they do get a say in the final election. That limits extremist Democrats from taking office with a simple plurality of the popular vote.

What's good for the Democrats is good for democracy.

In Louisiana, the overwhelming majority is Republican. It's not a party driven thing, it is about allowing minority parties more say in the general election.

Nonsense. The majority parties set up the rules. No one does it to give "minority parties" more say.

The parties set up this crazy system because they think it benefits them.

I think it is generally a disadvantage to the dominant party (which might explain why only two states do it). The California Democratic party tends to support candidates more to the left than where the overall population of California sits. If a moderate and a liberal Democrat are facing off in the general election, the moderate has the edge because he or she is more representative of the entire state. In the standard primary, the liberal Democrat would likely win and would face a conservative Republican giving the people in the middle little choice. The state party clearly doesn't support moderate Dianne Feinstein but the general population clearly does. In a top two primary, she's in with 2x the vote of her next challenger. A Democratic only primary would have been a lot closer. If you want to see the opposite, look at Lisa Murkowski in 2010. Despite being tremendously popular state wide, she lost the primary to an extremist and had to stage a write-in campaign (which she wins!) If Alaska had been running a top two primary, Murkowski would likely have ended up facing her Republican challenger in the general without all the write in garbage.

I thought about that before posting and decided to let it stand.