Party establishments should be careful what they wish for

Posted 8/21/12

We are currently witnessing a presidential primary season in which the powers that be in both the Republican and the Democratic parties are facing “outsider” candidates who are posing real …

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Party establishments should be careful what they wish for

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We are currently witnessing a presidential primary season in which the powers that be in both the Republican and the Democratic parties are facing “outsider” candidates who are posing real threats to their establishment primary opponents. And in both cases, so far, the response of the party establishments has been to strategize how to make sure their establishment candidates come out on top by the party conventions this summer.

But before they do so, they might want to take a look at some statistics published on January 11 by pollster Gallup. “In 2015, for the fifth consecutive year, at least four in 10 U.S. adults identified as political independents. The 42% identifying as independents in 2015 was down slightly from the record 43% in 2014. This elevated percentage of political independents leaves Democratic (29%) and Republican (26%) identification at or near recent low points.”

With independents now accounting for 42% of the American public, you can’t win an election without them. And all those people who have left the Democratic and Republican parties in recent years didn’t do so because they love establishment candidates. They did so because they feel those candidates have nothing to offer them. That’s fine for business as usual, as long as both parties are putting up establishment candidates—the independents will presumably be more or less equally repelled by both, and either not participate, or hold their noses and vote for the one they think will be the least awful. The result is more or less a wash in the general elections.

But now some non-establishment candidates are making real headway in a national presidential election, and all bets are off, as was shown so clearly in the results of the New Hampshire primary. Pundits covering election night oohed and aahed over the 44% of New Hampshire voters who were “undeclared,” as though the proportion is extraordinarily high in that state. As is clear from the Gallup statistics, it’s not. The only thing that’s a bit unusual is that New Hampshire is an “open” primary state, where independent voters, and indeed any voter, can vote in either primary. The fact that many of the upcoming primaries are closed admittedly means that Trump and Sanders will have a tougher row to hoe in future—indeed, that’s something that the party establishments are counting on to stop them.

But they’d better be careful what they wish for. Because in a general election—which, after all, is the endgame—anybody can vote for anybody. And a candidate that can only survive in the hothouse atmosphere of party favoritism is not necessarily going to be the one that survives best in November—not with 42% of the population up for grabs.

To get an idea of the potential impact of independent participation, note that a whopping 72% of independents voting in the New Hampshire Democratic primary voted for Sanders, and 39% of independents in the Republican primary voted for Trump. Whatever you think of these candidates, you can’t ignore the implied potential for increased voter participation in the general election if this underserved constituency feels that it is finally given some kind of a different choice.

No doubt the Republicans will continue to try to find an establishment candidate to rally round, though how successfully remains to be seen. Meanwhile, regardless of the results of upcoming Democratic primaries, the Democratic establishment has a much more powerful weapon than Republicans in the form of superdelegates. By definition, superdelegates are part of the party establishment; they are a much higher proportion of total Democratic delegates (about 15%) than of Republican delegates (only about 7%), and unlike their Republican counterparts, Democratic superdelegates are not bound to vote consistently with the way the citizens of their states have voted. That gives Sanders a much steeper hill to climb than Trump.

That could mean trouble for the Democrats.

If both party establishments succeed in taking back control over their process, we’ll have a business-as-usual general election. If both outsiders succeed in getting a nomination, we’re in for a pretty interesting and unusual national conversation this fall. But if one party nominates an outsider, and the other an insider—guess which side is going to get the greatest voter participation on the part of those independents?

Something the establishments might think about before they throw those “outsiders” overboard.

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