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TESTIMONY
Testimony by Professor Richard Barton from Syracuse University on research supporting open primaries
0:58:57
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3 min
Richard Barton, an Assistant Teaching Professor at Syracuse University and Senior Research Fellow at United America, presents research on primary elections and alternative systems.
He states that evidence shows open/all-candidate primaries significantly increase turnout in primary elections, which are often the most consequential. General election turnout sees a modest increase or draw.
Barton cites recent studies indicating these reforms have a consistent impact on reducing polarization, contrary to some earlier, more limited research.
- He also mentions research finding that all-candidate primaries do not undercut the influence of political parties in nominations and can reduce the impact of ideological donors and PACs.
Richard Barton
0:58:57
Thank you so much for having me.
0:58:58
My name's Richard Barton.
0:59:00
I am an assistant teaching professor at Syracuse University and a senior research fellow at United America.
0:59:06
And my research focuses on primary elections and alternative systems.
0:59:12
So I wanna kinda weigh in on a few of the conversations that have already been going on here.
0:59:20
So the evidence on turnout on open all candidate primaries, including the top two and top four models under debate now, The evidence on that and turnout is that as the commission is alluding to significantly increases turnout in the primary election, which in most cases is the most consequential election.
0:59:43
And this is based on numerous studies from the Bipartisan Policy Center, from scholars, Robert Boatwright, who's a leader on primary research and Caroline Tolbert research by Andrew Sinclair.
0:59:57
Now in general elections, as one of the advocates against the reform mentioned in general elections, there's these competing impacts, which is that all candidate primaries produce more competitive general elections and that competition tends to drive up turnout in the general election.
1:00:18
But there is also roll off from same party general elections.
1:00:23
When you have like two Ds running against each other in a blue district, you have a significant percentage of Republicans who are not gonna turn out there.
1:00:31
And so on net, we see, I would say a modest increase, but basically a draw in general election turnout.
1:00:41
And research on the competitiveness has been done by myself and others.
1:00:48
The studies on the impact of these reforms and polarization find the more recent studies that use the same kinds of data and the same method as earlier studies find a quite consistent impact at reducing polarization.
1:01:02
And this is work that's been done by myself, by Christian Gross at USC, by Jesse Crosson at the University of Purdue.
1:01:09
And there were earlier studies, including studies, and one of the authors, Seth Maskett has been referenced and is here and is a friend and colleague of mine.
1:01:18
But I will say that his earlier work on this was the data ended in 2014 really had sort of a quite limited sample of all candidate primaries that had occurred at that point that found really sort of no real impact on polarization.
1:01:35
So the more recent studies using the same kind of data find a significant mitigating effect.
1:01:41
Of course, California still looks polarized, but California was by the common metrics, the most polarized state by a long measure before the reform was passed.
1:01:51
Two last things in my final seconds here are research that's been done by me collaboratively with other scholars.
1:01:58
We find that all Canada primaries do not undercut political parties, specifically their influence in the nomination process.
1:02:08
And they also do undercut the impact of ideological donors and political action committees.
1:02:14
And I'm happy to describe my data and methods a little more fully.