Broken Primaries

By Paul Weiser

Something has, quite obviously, gone wrong with the Republican presidential primary system: it has produced a nominee-apparent (McCain) who is seriously out of step with a large majority of Republican voters on several critical issues and actively dislikes that majority. The question is what to change in order to have a better candidate and make better choices in the future.

What has happened is fairly obvious: it's a variant of the problem we've had ever since Nixon was first elected, that the conservative interest is so preponderant nationally that it can be split. This was most obvious in Clinton's first victory, when the split between Bush Sr. and Perot (Clinton's spoiler) allowed a Democrat/liberal minority to triumph.

In 2008 the same dynamic worked within the Republican primary system. To simplify and generalize, consider a situation where all state primaries are first-past-the- post (that is, the winner is the candidate with the most votes) and there are two general market-baskets of policies designated "Crab" and "Lobster." Of the four candidates A through D, each is personally favored by a percentage of voters but his ideological mix - Crab or Lobster - will be favored by a different mix of voters in the general election.

Candidate	Personal Vote	Crab/Lobster	National Crab/Lobster Vote	Personal Winner (First past the post)	National Winner (Majority of all voters)
A	35%	Lobster	40%	Winner	Loser
B	32%	Crab	60%	Loser	Winner
C	28%	Crab	60%	Loser	Winner
D	5%	Lobster	40%	Loser	Loser

As the chart above shows, candidate A (personally popular but a Lobster) will win every state primary and the party nomination even though 60% of his party and the nation want the opposite (Crab) policy basket. He not only doesn't represent a national consensus, he doesn't even represent his own party. He will lose the election unless the other party chooses someone even worse.

The proper and representative outcome in this situation is a brokered convention at which B or C is nominated after the first ballot fails to produce a winner. This is the result toward which the post-1968 Democrat mechanism of proportional representation plus superdelegate balance-weight tends: at this point in 2008 (late March) the near-balance of state-chosen delegates accurately represents a party deadlocked between Clinton and Obama. If the same system were used by the Republican party instead of first-past-the- post, the Crab (Conservative) interest would have 60% of the delegate votes and choose candidate B (Romney).

An additional confusing factor is open primaries. The 2008 dynamic has been for the Republicans to have a real choice at the beginning of the primary season and Democrats to have one at the end. Given the choice between a party primary in their state where their votes can make a difference and one where it can make no difference, voters naturally choose to vote in the party primary where their vote has leverage - even if this involves the unethical act of voting in the other party's primary. Thus, "independents" and Democrats tended to vote in the early Republican primaries when the Republican nomination was wide open and the Democrat nomination appeared a foregone conclusion, while "independents" and Republicans are tending to vote in the later primaries when the Republican nominee has already been determined but the Democrat nomination is, to everyone's surprise, wide open.

As an aside, this makes nonsense of counting the popular vote in primaries. In the early primaries, Democrats voted on the Republican side for leverage (like independents) and, incidentally, to make mischief by picking the worst Republican. Later, mischievous Republicans swell the totals similarly in Democrat primaries. Republicans were dispirited all through the contest by, at the start, their unappetizing choices and, later, the absence of choice; Clinton voters didn't vote Democrat at the beginning when it seemed there was no need or no choice for them, either. This suggests the Clinton "popular" vote, counting early primaries, underrepresents her actual support.

There are two bad and unavailing ways to try to fix the Republican primary system: closed primaries and media control. Closed primaries are never really closed because first-time voters must always be allowed to choose a party, and the votes of "independents" are more valuable than party stalwarts in representing the preference of swing voters in the national election. Media control - preventing the obvious fawning on McCain and Obama which has taken place in 2008 - suffers from the curse of all government regulation: the regulators won't be as smart as the media/party operatives because those regulators will be second- or third-rank former operatives themselves (no one else has the expertise, but the best will stick where the yield is highest).

There are two plausible ways to fix the Republican primary system: proportional representation and runoffs. Proportional representation is the obvious answer: it has the advantages for a party nomination that are its fatal disadvantages in actual elections. The Democrat counterweight subsystem - superdelegates - is inappropriate for Republicans since it would overrepresent the country club/RINO wing in much the same way open primaries do - but without the virtue of giving independents a voice.

Runoff primaries - where the two highest vote-getters meet - are mechanically difficult and will often be unnecessary. But they do force voters to make a binding and considered final selection where proportional representation still allows them to throw their votes away in a fit of pique (for Ron Paul in 2008, as an example). They eliminate the "none of the above" effect which may be appropriate in actual elections but wrecks party primaries. Furthermore, they enforce closed primaries because only those who voted in the first round could vote in that party's second and final round. Admittedly, this would include troublemakers from the other party - but probably not enough to throw the nomination to the wrong candidate (in the example, to pick a Lobster instead of a Crab). Finally, if runoff primaries are always planned but will often be unnecessary, the mechanical problems and added costs will be no worse than necessary.

On the whole, then, so long as their foundation conservative ideology represents a national preponderance so great it is vulnerable to splitting, Republicans should at least use proportional representation without superdelegates in their national primaries and at best use runoffs. The final stumbling block is that the national party - particularly its RINO component - came up under first- past-the-post and will resist (being RINOs) dishonestly.

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