There’s a good chance…if we vote strategically

In the movie, Dumb and Dumber, Jim Carrey’s character asks the woman he loves if there is a chance they could end up together. When she tells him the odds are one in a million, his reaction is not despair but elation…”So you’re telling me there’s a chance…yeah!” If moderates and independents vote in the primaries (see The Primary is the New Election) and use their votes strategically, the chances are far better than one in a million. In fact, in many districts and states, the number of votes required to lift a moderate candidate to victory over a more extreme candidate is surprisingly small, as discussed in our post, Gerrymandering and Its Discontents.

So what does strategic voting look like? We are focusing here on the 93% of Congressional districts that are “safe” for one or the other party, which we are defining as D+5 or R+5, meaning that party reliably wins by at least a 5% margin in the general election. If you live in a genuinely competitive district, then feel free to ignore this post but do not forget to vote in the primary. For the vast majority who live in safe districts, read on, because if you do not vote strategically your voice is not being heard.¹ As an aside, the preceding footnote links to the website of The Fulcrum, which, together with Unite America², is focused on the exact same issue we are highlighting here. They believe electoral reform is required to allow voters to have a greater voice in the primaries; we applaud their goals and vision, which we share, but we believe that electoral reform is difficult and are focused instead on trying to reform the electorate.

Let’s start with the low-hanging fruit. If you are registered as Independent or Unaffiliated you should register with your locally dominant party. Why? Because unless you live in one of the minority of states with fully open primaries, where voters can vote for any candidate regardless of their party registration status, you are losing your voice in the most important phase of the election cycle. And since the winner of the dominant party primary is almost certain to win the general election, THAT is the primary you want to participate in. If you are delighted with the candidate selection you are seeing in the general election, then feel free to continue to sit out the primaries. But if you have not been delighted and want your vote to count, register for and vote in the primary of the locally dominant party.

To quote the Big Fig Newton, “here comes the tricky part.” If you are registered as a member of the minority party in your district, you should switch your registration to that of the locally dominant party. “Wait, what?”, we hear you saying. The math and the arguments are exactly the same as we highlighted for Independents above. The winner of the dominant party primary will win the general election, so if you want a chance to influence the outcome of the election your chance is the primary and your battlefield is the dominant party’s primary. A friend of mine who is a lifelong moderate Republican is registered as a Democrat in New York City for exactly this reason: the Democratic primary is where the general election winners are selected and she wants to have a voice in the selection process.

Listen, I appreciate that this may feel existentially wrong, especially depending on the political situation in your district. The locally dominant party may be choosing candidates you find extremely distasteful, and registering to vote in their primary may feel like rewarding them for their bad behavior. I would encourage you to think of it instead as a form of combat, like jiu-jitsu which derives from the Japanese words for ‘gentle art’. Jiu-jitsu uses the opponent’s momentum against them with subtle holds and throws instead of frontal assaults. If you think of the opponent as the extreme levels of partisanship in politics, here is an opportunity to take that opponent down using its own momentum. Doesn’t it feel better to think of it as a way of fighting against their bad behavior?

In our post Get Over Yourself, we highlight why working to pull the dominant party towards the middle actually helps the broader political climate. And, as previously mentioned, our note Gerrymandering and Its Discontents shows just how manageable the numbers are in many districts.

1. https://thefulcrum.us/big-picture/partisan-primary ↩︎
2. https://www.uniteamerica.org/ ↩︎