Alaska’s predominantly Native regions delivered huge margins against repealing the state’s new elections system, despite facing continued logistical challenges to voting.
Partisan primaries tend to produce more extreme candidates. The hope is switching to a combined primary will result in moving candidates of more general appeal on to the general election.
I understand that.
My question was: why is a primary needed in the first place? It makes sense with first past the post, but with ranked choice voting and instant runnoff, I don’t get why.
Does the US constitution require state to organise primaries?
Primaries can have so many candidates the median voter is never going to learn about all of them. A primary is a reasonable way to down-select to a candidate pool where they all have a chance to make their case to voters without being seen as noise.
Partisan primaries tend to produce more extreme candidates. The hope is switching to a combined primary will result in moving candidates of more general appeal on to the general election.
I understand that. My question was: why is a primary needed in the first place? It makes sense with first past the post, but with ranked choice voting and instant runnoff, I don’t get why. Does the US constitution require state to organise primaries?
Primaries can have so many candidates the median voter is never going to learn about all of them. A primary is a reasonable way to down-select to a candidate pool where they all have a chance to make their case to voters without being seen as noise.