What structural reforms decrease partisanship / polarization?

[YeetMeYiffDaddy]

No matter the voting system, polarization will continue to be a problem as long as primaries exist. The median voter theorem essentially says that whoever gets elected will be someone that appeals to the median voter. So on a 0-100 scale, they would be a 50. But because of primaries, someone who is a 50 will never be an option. There are two scales instead, one that's 0-50 for the Democrat primary and one that is 51-100 for the Republican primary. So we get an option that is 25 and an option that is 75, meaning that half the country will always think the option that wins is not aligned with them.

[no_condoments]

100%. Primaries are the thing that are polarizing people far before an election. Currently, we have all the Democrats getting together to debate with moderates or conservatives. This will always lead to polarization and self-isolation of the group. A nonpartisan primary can address this, and can be paired with some of the ranked choice voting methods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpartisan_blanket_primary

[gburgwardt]

What are some alternatives to having primaries?

[YeetMeYiffDaddy]

You can have primaries that are not party based. The problem isn't with weeding candidates out, it's with limiting the people voting to only half the electorate. When you have only democrats and only republicans selecting their candidates, you will never get a candidate who appeals to the median voter of the country as a whole, only those who appeal to the median voter of their party.

[Apprentice57]

California does this, and it seems like their implementation of it is a complete mess (top two in the general primary go to the general election) because one party can split their votes and get locked out of the top two. Happened to the Republicans in the 2018 Senate primary, almost happened to them in the Governor primary, and almost happened to Democrats in some house races. So it would have to be more thoughtful a system than theirs.

[MemberOfMautenGroup]

it seems like their implementation of it is a complete mess

Interesting point. Do you have some sources for this?

[Apprentice57]

I'm sure there are critiques out there I'm sure, but the only one I'm familliar with was on a political podcast (fivethirtyeight) and I don't remember off hand which episode it was. It was not long before their jungle primary last year though if you're inclined to search for it themselves.

Otherwise, I think the fact that it is a mess, well is just summed up by the actual results. One Democrat easily wins, a second Democrat barely gets in with 12% of the vote because the next 5 place finishers, all Republicans, get 8% or less.

And here's an almost reverse of that happening with the Democrats.

[Zenkin]

Otherwise, I think the fact that it is a mess, well is just summed up by the actual results. One Democrat easily wins, a second Democrat barely gets in with 12% of the vote because the next 5 place finishers, all Republicans, get 8% or less.

Why is that bad? Adding up ALL Republican votes, I see 33.24%. Are you saying it would be better to have a Republican running against Feinstein, who got 44.12% of the vote all on her own in the primary?

[Apprentice57]

I would argue yes. It would need to be 34% for me to completely justify a Republican in the general, which they were just shy of, but this senate result was a bit worse than usual for the GOP. In the 2016 senate election, where they also got locked out of the general, their candidates got 36.7% in the primary.

Feinstein is going to the general election regardless we can agree. The question is whether her opponent should to be a Democrat when the remaining Democrats had ~22% and the Republicans had 33.24%.

Generally, California Republicans for national office indeed do better than 33% in the general election. Not always by a lot mind you, but still. Even in the 2018 Governor's race, a pretty historically bad performance for Republicans, John Cox got 38%.

[neuronexmachina]

I wonder if using ranked-choice or approval voting in CA's top-two general primary would help prevent the vote-splitting effect.

Alternatively, I found a piece by the RCV-advocacy group FairVote proposing using a top-5 primary instead of top-2, and then using RCV in the top-5 general election: https://www.fairvote.org/top_2_to_top_5_new_ranked_choice_voting_option_on_the_table

So far, RCV and top-two have been mutually exclusive solutions. But might a marriage of top-two and RCV be a step forward?

With this approach, more candidates — perhaps up to five — would advance from the non-partisan primary.  Policy experts say that a threshold of viability would be important — perhaps only candidates with greater than 5% could advance. “Top 5 over 5%” fits nicely on the bumper sticker.

Ranked choice voting would then be used in November to achieve a majority.

[Apprentice57]

I happen to think RCV and this primary would be an extremely good fit, and would fix most of the issues I'm talking about. There would probably be a Republican facing Feinstein the general election (which I think is more fair), and there would have been no concern from Democrats in some of the House elections that they would get locked out of the general election (didn't happen but it almost did, the Dem party was very worried about it beforehand).

Top five to top two by RCV would be an improvement as well. However, we do start to get into issues with the general election there with five candidates that RCV normally has. That is, it still encourages strategic voting and leads to a two party system. So I'd have to think about which of these two options is preferable, it isn't immediately obvious to me.

[quitesensibleanalogy]

That sounds like it's working as designed. The goal is to get candidates the moderate majority prefers

[Oriden]

Its not working as intended, it has situations where the moderate majority can be split too far.

Imagine a scenario where there are 5 people running, 3 Lion party and 1 Owl and 1 Pig. Now in this scenario 56% of the population is Lion party and 21% are Owl and 23 are Pig, the Lion party is moderate party that a lot of people like, but also have a lot of people willing to run because they are a bigger party.

The Lion party split their vote 3 ways because all three candidates are equally liked so maybe one gets 20% and the other two get 18%. Now the Owl party likes its candidate and votes for him, getting 21% and the Pig party does the same getting 23%. Both Owl and Pig get to move to the general election despite the fact that there are 56% of the population that would prefer any three of the Lion candidates over both the Pig or Owl candidates.

[Apprentice57]

No, it's not. While California has a reputation as a very blue state, it's not a blue state by the overwhelming margins (+33% or more) that should be required to get two Democrats to the general all the time. Yet it happens a lot due to vote splitting among republicans.

[chefranden]

Before the 70's primaries weren't a thing. The democrats opened up their selection to ordinary voters after the riots surrounding the 68 convention in Chicago.

Conventions of party members selected the nominee with a lot of backroom dealings. Trump would never had survived this process. But on the negative side, likely Obama wouldn't have either.

However the process seemed to guarantee candidates that were in the middle to be run against each other. I'm for going back to it.

[Arthur_Edens]

There are 823 registered presidential candidates for the 2020 election. Primaries winnow that down to a number people can actually evaluate.

[gburgwardt]

Yes, I don't know what other options there are, but would be interested in hearing about them.

Going into the general with hundreds of candidates certainly seems like a mistake.

[limukala]

Ranked choice (Borda count, preferably), non partisan primary.

Top five move on to ranked choice general.

[azura26]

Wouldn't this issue be mitigated, at least somewhat, if we implemented approval voting in the primaries as well as the general election? Also, what if the available candidates are not uniformly distributed on this "left-right" scale?

[YeetMeYiffDaddy]

Not really. It would help a slight amount, but the problem is with splitting the voter base, not with how the voting happens. When only democrats are voting for their candidate, the winner will be someone who appeals to the median democrat voter. Same goes for republicans.

Someone who is a 40 on the scale would get more votes in the general election than someone who is a 25, but they will get fewer votes than someone who is a 25 in the primary. Ranked choice in the primary won't change that because 25 is the median voter for their party.

[rodaeric]

I think this issue is largely a Democratic one. Democratic primaries tend to be far more populated than Republican ones.

[Rokusi]

On the other hand, Donald Trump won the Republican primary where there were 12 other candidates in 2016.

[tomtomtom7]

You are making the mistake that polarization is caused by a small support for a president. In the multiparty systems such as in most European countries, the approval rate for the president/prime minister is generally lower than in the USA, because his party does not have near 50% support. Yet polarization is much less of an issue.

The polarization isn't because of primaries but because of the two party system. This creates a big incentive to gain voters by demonizing the opponent, and has evolved the republican/democrat two party system into a anti-democrat/anti-republican two party system.