Democrats: Vote Republican! (I promise, it's not what it sounds like)
Primaries have all sorts of issues, but that shouldn't stop you from having a say—even if your state is controlled by a party you don't like. Take Missouri and Hawaii as examples.
Much is made of America’s primary system being broken, and that conventional view is correct: primaries are low-turnout elections that basically give the most partisan voters an extra vote. Primaries tend to select candidates who are more extreme than and less representative of the electorate.
Based on ratings from Cook Political Report, there are 69 competitive1 House seats at the moment, which means that 84% of House seats are functionally decided in the primary. If you remove the Likely Democrat and Likely Republican seats, that number pops to 90%.2
There are a lot of reasons why so few seats are competitive, stemming largely from the way that states draw their Congressional maps—something I am way more familiar with than most.
But here is what’s Not Quite Right… Most Americans can vote in the primaries of their choosing. If you’re a Democrat, there’s no shame in crossing over and grabbing a Republican ticket. In many cases, it’s strategic.
Get out and vote (where it matters)
According to my back-of-the-envelope math,3 at least two-thirds of Americans aren’t restricted when deciding which party’s primary to vote in. In most states, that means you can request either a Republican or a Democratic ticket,4 regardless of who you’ve voted for in the past or any party affiliation you have.5
Let’s say that you live in a state like Hawaii, which has open primaries. Hawaii is, almost uniformly these days, a Democratic state.6 And yet some 75,000+ people chose to vote in a Republican primary that was entirely meaningless.
I am sure that most of those people were committed Republicans who find Democrats thoroughly objectionable. But they could’ve voted in the Democratic primary and had a say in picking a candidate more palatable to them, even if they don’t actually like them.
Instead, they took time off work, went to their polling place, and in almost every election, got to choose who had the honor of finishing a distant second to the inevitable Democratic winner.7
Missourians (and others), pick a winner!
Like most of the people on this list, I live and vote in Missouri. And in Missouri, as much as I wish it weren’t the case, there aren’t a lot of races lately where voting on the Democratic side makes much of a difference.8
Missouri, despite repeated efforts to close its primaries, allows voters to pick any primary ballot they want when they go to vote. So: while I am not a Republican, I will be grabbing a Republican ballot come August 6.
Unless you live in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District and have the opportunity to vote for Wesley Bell,9 I would encourage you to grab the Republican ballot too. Whoever wins the Republican primary will almost certainly be the winner come November; this way, you can at least vote for people who are the least crazy, the least anti-democracy, and the most pragmatic in their approach to politics.10
To vote in the Democratic primary is something like voting in Hawaii’s Republican primary: you’re offering input on who gets to finish in a robust second place.
You still won’t like a lot of what they do. But at least you’ll have had some input. Though it doesn’t always feel like it, not all Republicans are created equal.11
Some final thoughts
If you live in one of these states, with open or semi-open primaries, always grab the primary ballot of the party whose candidates win elections: Alabama, Arkansas, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, and Vermont.12
This doesn’t betray your values as a Democrat, and this doesn’t preclude you from voting for Democrats in November, like I will. But it gives you a say in deciding who your all-but-certain representatives will be.
In the next edition of Not Quite Right… I will talk about what’s going on with younger voters, and how all over the world, young men and young women are all of a sudden voting in drastically different ways.
Finally, please take a moment to fill out this survey. I’d love your thoughts and ideas.
Meaning, simply, that both a Democrat and a Republican have a realistic shot of winning.
There are groups like the Welcome PAC, who I work with, that try to find competitive races which, despite conventional wisdom, Democrats can win with the right candidates. That’s a critical part of winning back a U.S. House majority. But it doesn’t change the fact that primaries almost always decide elections.
Or Libertarian, Green, Constitution, etc.
A few states—Alaska, California, Louisiana, and Washington state, I believe—have candidates from all parties on the same primary ballot, which makes things easier.
Every statewide elected official is a Democrat. Hawaii has 76 state legislators: 68 Democrats and eight Republicans. You get the idea.
For what it’s worth, about 75% of votes cast in Hawaii’s primary were in the Democratic primary even though the Governor ultimately won only (“only”) 63% of the vote, suggesting that some Republicans were strategic with their primary votes.
Nicole Galloway is the one Democratic exception. She had the fortune of running against a flawed Republican in 2018, and then she lost in her bid for Governor in 2020.
If you do live in the 1st Congressional District, you’ll have the ability to vote in the primary between Wesley Bell and Rep. Cori Bush. I may write more on this later, but I’m full-throated in my endorsement of Wesley Bell and would encourage all of you reading this who live in the 1st Congressional District to pick up a Democratic ballot and vote for him. Beyond Wesley’s impressive bona fides, Cori Bush is bad for the district: she’s voted against infrastructure investment, public safety, and jobs. She’s under investigation for misusing taxpayer money to line her own pockets. She’s shown no interest in legislating. If she isn’t outright lying about what she’s done for the district, at the very least she’s grossly exaggerating.
Polls have her down significantly, and Wesley Bell will make a very good and very effective representative for St. Louis in Congress. Here’s a link to donate to Wesley Bell, if you can’t vote for him but want better Representatives in Congress: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/wesleybell-nqr.
At some point, I may offer thoughts on who Democrats and independents can vote for in Missouri’s Republican primaries. I won’t for now, in large part because doing so—being a Democrat offering a Republican primary endorsement—would be detrimental to this whole idea.
If I do so, it will probably be the night before or the morning of, too late for any opposition to mobilize against it.
Sometimes, Democrats talk about organizing to support the most flawed Republican candidate, in hopes that said crazy Republican turns off moderate voters and is therefore more beatable. (There was some discussion around Democrats supporting Eric Greitens’ Senate campaign in 2022 for this very reason.) Yes, that does sometimes happen—in the 2018 Kansas gubernatorial election, for instance, when a moderate Democrat won over a particularly loony Republican. But I think it’s a very bad idea for a lot of reasons, chief among them: be careful what you wish for, because you might get it.
I don’t care for Senator Eric Schmitt, but he’s certainly better than a Senator Eric Greitens would’ve been. And realistically, that’s what would’ve happened.
Unscientifically, I’m leaving off states like Colorado, Minnesota, Virginia, and Wisconsin, competitive states where the results of general elections are not foregone conclusions.