- [Presenter] Let's talk about primary elections,
which are often known as primaries.
One way to think about them is that
they're just preliminary elections
used to get down to a fewer number of candidates.
A very simple example would be
let's say there's a congressional seat in your district,
and there's three folks who are interested in that position
who associate themselves with the Democrats.
And let's say there's also three folks in your district
who are interested in running for that position
who associate themselves with the Republicans.
There are some situations where you can have
just a big preliminary election
where they all run against each other.
We'll talk about that in a second.
But, usually you have a situation
where they try to think about, well,
let's just pick one to represent the Democrats,
and let's just pick one to represent the Republicans.
And so that's where the primary election would happen.
So you would have a Democratic primary
where these folks would run against each other,
and whoever gets the most votes would then go on
to represent the Democratic Party in that election.
So let's say that person wins,
then they will go on into the general election.
Likewise, these three folks would run against each other
in the Republican primary,
and whoever gets the most votes,
let's say it's that person right over there,
they would go to the general election
to go against likely the Democrat right over here.
So this is the person who would go against the Democrat.
And then they are going to compete in the general election
against each other, head to head,
and then whoever gets that would get the congressional seat.
Now even in this type of primary,
you could call this a partisan primary,
there's an interesting question.
Who votes in this Democratic Party primary?
Who votes in that?
And, who votes in the Republican Party primary?
And there's actually two systems for this,
or two general buckets, and there's some nuances
from region to region.
But one way is that only registered Democrats
could vote in the Democratic primary,
pick who represents their party in the general,
and only registered Republicans
can vote in the Republican primary.
That situation where only registered folks
can vote in their respective primaries,
that is called a closed primary.
It's called closed because it's not open
to just anyone who wants to vote in the primary.
Only the people who have already
registered in that party can vote.
Now you can imagine the opposite of that
is the open primary, so open primary,
where even though these are partisan primaries,
you are trying to figure out
who's going to represent the Democrats,
and who's going to represent the Republicans,
you can allow people who are either
not affiliated with a party
or even people who are affiliated with the other party
to vote in your primary.
So, for example, in this Democratic primary,
there could be, for some reason,
folks who feel passionate about this candidate
who are actually registered Republicans
but who they wanna vote in this primary.
Or you could have people who are unaffiliated
who would vote in this primary
if we are dealing with an open primary.
Now one interesting question is,
is how could the dynamics change
if we're dealing with a open versus a closed primary?
Well, political scientists like to think a lot about this,
and even states like to think about this,
in terms of what is appropriate?
What is most representative?
What gives the people of that state
the fairest voice in their elections?
Now people who like closed primaries might say, well look,
we're trying to figure out who represents
the Democratic Party; it should only be Democrats.
We're trying to figure out who represents
the Republican Party; it should only be Republicans.
Now criticism of closed primaries might be,
well, if you limit who gets to vote in the primary,
then these candidates are only going to cater to the base.
They're only going to cater to the interests
of people in their party, and in particular,
they might cater to people who are
at the extremes of their party.
For example, let's say we have a situation like this.
Let's say that this is the population right over here,
and people at the right end, these are conservatives.
Conservatives.
Conservative.
And these folks right over here are liberal.
And if you were to look at the population as a whole,
let's say the distribution in the population.
Let's say it looks something like this.
You have some people here who are quite liberal,
and then you have actually the bulk of the people
who are some place in between,
and then you have another bump of folks
who are actually quite conservative.
So you would guess that, hey, look,
a view that's someplace in between, maybe a moderate view,
would actually maybe be most representative of the people.
But if you have closed primaries, what might happen?
Well, the Democratic primary,
the people who would be eligible to vote,
would be these people right over here.
It would be these people, the people
who have registered as Democrats.
And in the Republican primary, well, if it's closed,
only the registered Republicans would vote,
maybe these people right over here.
And these people in the middle,
these would be the unaffiliated-with-a-party people.
And so, if you have different candidates here,
let's say that this is candidate one,
where they're here on the spectrum.
This is candidate two, which is here on the spectrum,
and candidate three is here on the spectrum.
You could imagine that for this population,
they're all going to say things that speak to this group.
And in particular, they might actually,
the person who wins, might actually be very successful
of getting the people at the extreme left right over here.
And so that person maybe is a person
who goes off to the general election.
Likewise, the same thing might be happening
on the Republican side.
You have the different candidates.
Maybe their personal views put 'em right over here.
And it's this person who is furthest to the right
who's really able to appeal to the folks right over here
who ends up winning and represents the Republican Party.
Well then what happens in the general election?
The entire population has to pick between folks
that actually are more indicative of either extreme.
That maybe the closed primary system,
it wouldn't have been so good for a candidate
who is reasonably moderate on the Democratic side.
Maybe someone is there,
or a candidate who is right over here.
Or maybe there's a candidate
whose views are right in the middle.
First of all, if they want to represent a party,
they would have to moot pick one of these parties.
And then to have a shot, they would have to represent views
that would be to the left or to the right
of where they truly are, and maybe they wouldn't have
as good of a shot as the people
who actually are quite liberal
or the folks who are actually are quite conservative.
So that's a criticism of the closed primary.
An open primary might make this a little bit better,
because you have these registered Democrats here.
But folks from here might decide, hey,
I wanna go vote there as well.
So they might moderate things.
Or folks from here might say, hey,
I wanna go vote here as well.
Now critics of an open primary would say,
well those aren't the people who
really are registered in that party.
And you could also have a phenomenon of rating,
where people maybe on the Republican side
could say, look, you know what?
I know who's gonna win here.
The Republican primary doesn't need my vote.
I'm gonna go and try to pick
the weakest candidate on the other side
so that in the general election,
my candidate has the best shot.
Now third type of primary is known
as a blanket primary,
often a nonpartisan blanket primary.
In a nonpartisan blanket primary,
instead of going through this partisan process,
all the candidates here would go
into one preliminary election.
And in that preliminary election,
the top two candidates would then
go on to the general election.
So two candidates are going to move on
in a blanket primary, a nonpartisan blanket primary,
and what's interesting there is you can actually get
two candidates from the same party going.
Proponents of a blanket primary say, hey,
this is the fairest of it all.
Instead of making things partisan,
just let everyone run against everyone else,
and the top two will then get to the general election.
Now you'll see all three of these in the United States
at congressional elections or even statewide elections.
But if we're thinking about presidential elections,
we're thinking mainly about these two.
And when we're talking about presidential election,
these are part of primary season
where it's thinking about how many delegates
candidates would get during the national convention
where they actually pick their candidate.
I'll leave you there.
It's an interesting way to think
about the different ways of voting,
especially voting in a preliminary way
to get down to a fewer number of candidates.
I'll let you think about which one you prefer.