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The effect of California’s top-two primary system on voter turnout in US House Elections

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Abstract

This paper evaluates one potential impact of California’s Proposition 14, which created a top-two primary system for all non-Presidential election races within the state. Our analysis is twofold, with the concern of each analysis placed on voter roll off when the result of the top-two primary placed a non-traditional pairing of candidates on the ballot.We focus on U.S. House races using data at the congressional district level to evaluate the impact of a non-traditional general election that omits one of the major parties from the ballot. Using major party registration of the political party omitted from the general election ballot, we find suggestive evidence that voter roll-off increases with these non-traditional contests. These elections do not effect voter turnout as a whole, but can increase voter roll-off by upwards of 7%.

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Notes

  1. Here, we define voter roll-off as abstention in a down ballot race. For our purposes, the only down ballot races we investigate are for both chambers of Congress, namely, House seats.

  2. There is potential for the effect of same-party candidates and a major party v. minor party ballot to be explored within the paper. However, the small number of observations where a major party candidate is against a minor party of potentially slightly different views makes disentangling this effect difficult. Thus, that case is not presented itself.

  3. This is by no means to say that this effect is ubiquitously accepted in the literature. For a critical analysis of this literature and arguments refuting it, see Alvarez et al. (2006).

  4. This is not to say that California is the only state with this system for federal elections, excluding the Presidency. In 2004, Washington passed a similar measure (initiative 872) which it began using in 2008.

  5. For an overview of dominant theories of primary turnout, see Gerber and Morton (1998).

  6. This is different from strategic voting in general. For example, voters may be willing to vote for a candidate within their party that is not their first choice if they believe that their preferred candidate has a worse chance of winning a general election than their second choice (Cain 1978).

  7. For aggregate effects of voter turnout and roll-off across California and Washington, see Patterson (2020).

  8. With this being for the election of US House of Representatives, our data is only bi-annual and for even numbered years. To our knowledge, redistricting of congressional districts has not occurred since 2012, and thus our data should consistently represent the same district throughout our sample.

  9. District 21 in 2014 and District 1 in 2018 have a turnout for the House race that exceeds that of the Gubernatorial race. Districts 1 and 10 in 2016 have House turnout that exceeds the Presidential turnout in each respective district for 2016.

  10. This presents the possibility of under-predicting voter roll-off if voters chose not to participate in contests higher up on the ballot. In particular, we are only studying specific voter roll-off, that is we are not suggesting that voters are abstaining from any other measures on the ballot. For example, if a voter abstained from the Presidential and House races, they would not be counted in our measure of voter roll-off, even if they voted in another election on the ballot.

  11. For a description of PVI, see Moskowitz et al. (2019).

  12. These elections can be solid, likely, lean, or toss-up Democrat or Republican.

  13. For reference of the number of races, see Table 1.

  14. Presidential turnout is used for 2012 and 2016, while Gubernatorial turnout is used for 2014 and 2018.

  15. Republican v. Other party was omitted from the analysis as there was only one occurrence of that combination.

  16. Important to mention is that the only variation of the analysis is the one where the four observations with a greater House turnout than the turnout for President or Governor are included in their raw form. The results are consistent across the other specifications, however.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Joshua Hall and Laura Buffett-Jackson for their helpful comments and suggestions. Any remaining errors are the sole responsibility of the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. John Chambers College of Business and Economics, West Virginia University, PO Box 6025, Morgantown, WV, 26506-6025, USA

    Daniel D. Bonneau

  2. Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 60637, USA

    John Zaleski

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  1. Daniel D. Bonneau
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Correspondence to Daniel D. Bonneau.

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Bonneau, D.D., Zaleski, J. The effect of California’s top-two primary system on voter turnout in US House Elections. Econ Gov 22, 1–21 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10101-021-00249-8

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