hanging election
Jun. 5th, 2014 12:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacCalifornia now lives under the regime of the "top two" or "jungle" primary. There are no party primaries (except for President, in years when that's up): instead, all the candidates run on one ballot, and the top two finishers go on to November, whichever party they happen to belong to.
That can lead to interesting results like this. There are more Democrats than Republicans in California, but a minor Democratic candidate siphoned off just enough votes that the other two, evenly matched, Democrats came out about the same as the two, pretty much evenly matched, Republicans. It's more luck of the draw, rather than a measure of the support of the candidates, that we're apparently (if these numbers hold) getting one of each party rather than two Republicans, and it's the uncontrollable factor of the number of candidates from each party that dictated that situation.
That's assuming that party labels still mean anything at all in statewide offices, and I think they do. Here's a blogger who thinks we should repeal this system, but besides writing irritatingly as if Nobody Could Have Predicted This, he gets the premise of the system wrong. It had nothing to do with attracting votes of registered independents, still less necessarily electing them to office. It was to attract support towards moderate, rather than extremist, candidates within the major parties.
That's one theory as to why the "moderate" Republican, rather than the Tea Partier, snagged second place in the gubernatorial race. Democrats who either disliked Jerry Brown or felt he had in the bag might have expressed preference among Republicans.
I don't vote that way myself. Under this regime, I've still been voting for the candidate I like best, and let the chips fall as they may. I might consider voting tactically, but I'd have to have reliable polling results to have any idea of what I was doing. If I were to pick one of the two strong Democrats in the Controller's race on the grounds of keeping the Republicans from claiming both spots, I'd have to have first known that there was a serious possibility of doing that, and then, which of the Democrats do I pick? Someone would have to tell me who was more likely to win, or who everybody else with the same idea was picking. Instead, I just voted for the one I thought would do a better job.
And the "jungle" primary can't explain this result. See the third-ranking candidate? That's the legislator who was arrested for gun trafficking and withdrew from the race, but not soon enough to have his name removed. Why did he get nearly 10% of the vote and rank above two serious candidates? There are theories: name recognition without remembering what you recognize the name for. Sheer cantankerous orneriness (as one blogger put it, "If I'm going to have a crook, why not pick one with a gun?"). Ethnic solidarity and refusing to believe he's guilty. Could be a lot of things.
That can lead to interesting results like this. There are more Democrats than Republicans in California, but a minor Democratic candidate siphoned off just enough votes that the other two, evenly matched, Democrats came out about the same as the two, pretty much evenly matched, Republicans. It's more luck of the draw, rather than a measure of the support of the candidates, that we're apparently (if these numbers hold) getting one of each party rather than two Republicans, and it's the uncontrollable factor of the number of candidates from each party that dictated that situation.
That's assuming that party labels still mean anything at all in statewide offices, and I think they do. Here's a blogger who thinks we should repeal this system, but besides writing irritatingly as if Nobody Could Have Predicted This, he gets the premise of the system wrong. It had nothing to do with attracting votes of registered independents, still less necessarily electing them to office. It was to attract support towards moderate, rather than extremist, candidates within the major parties.
That's one theory as to why the "moderate" Republican, rather than the Tea Partier, snagged second place in the gubernatorial race. Democrats who either disliked Jerry Brown or felt he had in the bag might have expressed preference among Republicans.
I don't vote that way myself. Under this regime, I've still been voting for the candidate I like best, and let the chips fall as they may. I might consider voting tactically, but I'd have to have reliable polling results to have any idea of what I was doing. If I were to pick one of the two strong Democrats in the Controller's race on the grounds of keeping the Republicans from claiming both spots, I'd have to have first known that there was a serious possibility of doing that, and then, which of the Democrats do I pick? Someone would have to tell me who was more likely to win, or who everybody else with the same idea was picking. Instead, I just voted for the one I thought would do a better job.
And the "jungle" primary can't explain this result. See the third-ranking candidate? That's the legislator who was arrested for gun trafficking and withdrew from the race, but not soon enough to have his name removed. Why did he get nearly 10% of the vote and rank above two serious candidates? There are theories: name recognition without remembering what you recognize the name for. Sheer cantankerous orneriness (as one blogger put it, "If I'm going to have a crook, why not pick one with a gun?"). Ethnic solidarity and refusing to believe he's guilty. Could be a lot of things.
