Who Caucuses? An Experimental Approach to Institutional Design and Electoral Participation

Abstract

During the 2008 presidential campaign, the question of mass participation in primaries and caucuses became unusually salient, with a close Democratic race calling special attention to these often overlooked procedural elements of America's democratic system. This study adds a new element to scholarship on institutional design and citizen participation by way of a survey-based experiment conducted in the midst of the 2008 campaign. The results show that institutional choices are not neutral. Nominating candidates through caucuses rather than primaries not only reduces the number of participants, but also significantly affects the ideological composition of the electorate. Caucuses produce a more ideologically consistent electorate than do primaries, because policy centrists appear to avoid caucuses. This experimental finding is strongly buttressed by the observational data on Obama and Clinton voters.* Brigham Young University (email: Chris_karpowitz@byu.edu). The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers and participants in both the faculty research seminar at Brigham Young University and the 2009 CCES Conference for valuable comments and suggestions on earlier versions of the manuscript. Replication data are available at http://dx.doi.org/

Party Rules and Equitable Representation in U.S. Presidential Nominating Contests

“…The choice of holding a presidential primary or holding caucuses was impactful for Obama and Sanders, as their vote shares were significantly higher in caucus states. Both candidates fit the common image of candidates benefiting from caucuses where participants tend to be positioned on the outer edges of the ideological spectrum and to be firmly dedicated to particular candidates (Karpowitz & Pope, 2015;Norrander, 1993;Panagopoulos, 2010). Consistent with Southwell's (1991) and Norrander and Wendland's (2016) findings, a state's decision to restrict participation to party identifiers or to open its delegate-selection event had no bearing on candidates' vote shares.…”

“…Campaign spending in general is higher in primary states than in caucus states (Gurian, 1990(Gurian, , 1993 while long-shot candidates, who often lack substantial financial resources, give greater attention to caucuses (Ridout, Rottinghaus, & Hosey, 2009). Caucuses typically engage fewer participants (Karpowitz & Pope, 2015), which in turn results in caucus participants tending to be less representative of a state's electorate as a whole in terms of policy preferences and ideology than are primary election participants (Karpowitz & Pope, 2015;Meinke, Staton, & Wuhs, 2006;Norrander, 1993;Panagopoulos, 2010). Most importantly, caucuses produce delegations to national nominating conventions that are more representative of popular votes in the various states than do primaries (Ansolabehere & King, 1990;Gleiber & King, 1987;Southwell, 1992).…”

Demographic Disparities Using Ranked-Choice Voting? Ranking Difficulty, Under-Voting, and the 2020 Democratic Primary

“…At the same time, using this data has some limitations. First, likely primary voters vary from the general electorate in that they tend to be more interested, knowledgeable, and more partisan (Karpowitz & Pope, 2015;Redlawsk, Bowen, & Tolbert, 2008; see also Abramowitz, 2008). Second, the analyses only pertain to Democratic primary voters (i.e., no Republicans).…”