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With increased political polarization, rules governing who can participate in primary elections have received more attention from advocates looking to reduce that polarization. That has led to an that during this past election put nine ballot measures before voters across seven states and Washington, .

Reformers argue that party-focused systems who do not identify with any political party. Since candidates need to appeal to their party’s base in order to advance to the general election, the choices voters are left with in November tend to represent party interests.

And reformers say that new systems would to the entire electorate, as building a broader coalition of voters would be necessary to win.

In three other states, advocates who object to changing the system to reaffirm the status quo or repeal previously adopted reforms.

Primary election systems and the rules determining who can vote in them have long been debated. A key difference between sides is the purpose of the primary — is it how political parties choose their champions? Or is it simply the first stage of a two-stage contest that determines who holds public office?

In states that are dominated by a single party, primaries are often the decisive election for who takes office. Therefore, the rules governing primaries matter greatly. I have been , particularly what happens when a state changes from one system to another, and can offer some insight.

In the 2024 election, voters proved hesitant to overhaul the election systems they were already familiar with, as .

Voters become familiar with the electoral system they live under and can be slow to embrace changes to that system. It can take several election cycles before they fully adapt to these changes.

Primary Election Types

There are : , where voters select which party’s ballot they want to fill out in the privacy of the voting booth; , where voters must publicly become a member of that party in order to receive their ballot; , where all candidates are listed on a single ballot, regardless of party, and a set number of top finishers advance to the general election.

While most states , which are partisan in nature, reformers across the U.S. have pushed for greater adoption of multi-party primaries.

California and Washington state , where all candidates, regardless of party, are listed together and the two candidates that receive the most votes advance to the general election, even if they are from the same party.

This turns the general election into a natural runoff where someone is guaranteed to receive more than 50% of the vote. to this system.

In Alaska, where the four candidates who get the most votes in the primary advance and the general election is decided by a ranked choice ballot system that eliminates the candidate receiving the lowest number of votes and redistributes their votes to the voter’s next preferred candidate until a 50% majority is achieved. This allows for an “instant runoff” without holding a separate election.

A repeal of the Alaskan system was one of this year’s ballot measures. , the repeal appears to have failed by a narrow 0.2 percentage-point margin, leaving the new system in place.

Package Deal Or Piecemeal

Four states — Arizona, Colorado, Idaho and Nevada — voted on ballot measures that sought to implement an Alaska-style change, combining new primary systems with a shift to a ranked choice system in the general election. Since voters were not able to pick just the elements they liked, this meant opposition to one part of the reform meant they were opposed to the entire reform.

, conducted a year prior to the election, found Idahoans divided over the two components of its ballot measure. While a 58% majority favored a top-four primary system, 50% said they opposed ranked choice voting. Only 29% expressed support for both options at once – the combination that the ballot measure proposed.

What followed the survey was an intense year of campaigning by both sides, to support or oppose the effort by the week prior to Election Day. The election result for Idaho’s ballot measure? Only 30% were in favor, 70% against. Idahoans were unmoved.

: One ballot measure would have established a top-four primary system, while a second would have required a 50% plus one majority threshold to win the general election. Whether that was accomplished by ranked choice voting or a separate runoff election was left up to the state Legislature.

While both measures failed, the top-four initiative failed by only 3 points, compared with the 50% plus one initiative failing by 21 points. Voters signaled a different tolerance for the two approaches.

Arizona, in addition to a potential reform that failed by 17 points, also got to vote on a .

The proposal would have prohibited all forms of multi-party primaries for partisan office — — and guaranteed that political parties would have one candidate per office on a general election ballot. It too failed — by a 16-point margin. , Arizona voters largely resisted any type of election change this year.

The Impact Of Political Parties

Party discipline at all levels, from elected officials and party leaders to rank-and-file members, may have been influential in these outcomes.

Political parties tend to view the purpose of a primary as selecting their nominee and will resist efforts to change that. In Idaho, , regardless of which faction of the party one belonged to. . It was the .

While opposition to top-four primary reform is not as pronounced as that against ranked choice voting, the widespread failure of these ballot measures, often by double-digit margins — — suggests there is currently little appetite among voters for systemwide reform.

This leaves reform-minded groups with the choice of either starting over to try again or finding new ways to navigate the current systems.

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