Crossover Voting Research Articles

Top-Four Primaries Help Moderate Candidates via Crossover Voting: The Case of the 2022 Alaska Election Reforms

Abstract Concerns about polarization and the difficulty moderate candidates have in winning primary elections have driven several electoral reform efforts in recent decades. In this article, we leverage reforms prior to the 2022 elections in Alaska to assess whether the top-four primary is likely to help moderate candidates succeed. We evaluate three mechanisms by which the top-four might help moderates: by allowing them to advance from the primary and compete for votes from the more moderate general electorate, by changing the composition of the primary electorate and/or by facilitating crossover voting during the primary. Our analysis suggests that the top-four primary creates opportunities for cross-party voting that can enhance the electoral prospects of moderate candidates.

The Dynamics of Hidden Partisanship and Crossover Voting in Semi-Closed Primaries

AbstractAmong US states with party registration, many allow the unaffiliated to choose either the Democratic or Republican primary. States with these semi-closed rules thus provide an option to voters with greater choice than registering with a single political party. Using the synthetic control method, I find that the introduction of semi-closed primaries is associated with growth in unaffiliated registration. However, the likelihood of unaffiliated registration is not even across the electorate in semi-closed states. I show that it is most common where a voter’s party is not competitive and the access unaffiliated registration provides to the strong party’s primary is valuable. Consistent with this instrumental motive, unaffiliated voters in semi-closed states use their freedom of choice to vote in the primary of the stronger party in the electorate. This leads to significant crossover voting among unaffiliated voters who do not identify with that party such as Democrats in red states or Republicans in blue states. These findings show the unintended consequences of electoral institutions and find primary crossover voting is more common under some circumstances than others.

Open primaries and crossover voting

We examine strategic voting in open primary elections by developing a Poisson voting game. In the model, two parties simultaneously hold primary elections, with two candidates competing in each party. Each voter chooses to vote for one of the four candidates without knowing how many other voters participate in each primary. Analyzing the model, we investigate what types of strategic crossover voting occur in equilibrium and under what circumstances they occur. In particular, we focus on two types of crossover voting: hedging (voting for the moderate candidate of the opposite party) and raiding (voting for the extreme candidate of the opposite party). We show that the pattern of strategic voting in equilibrium critically depends on candidate positions and uncertainty about the outcome in the general election.

The Partisan Geographies of Sincere Crossover Voting Behavior: Evidence from North Carolina

A great deal of interdisciplinary literature suggests that although the general motivation to vote is complex, it can be partially explained by a multitude of psychological and contextual factors, including local geographic patterns. I extend this observation to one particular type of voting behavior: sincere crossover voting, or voting for a candidate outside of one's own political affiliation, in a general election. Using a replicable methodological approach that incorporates partisan spatial segregation and exposure as predictors into statistical models of crossover voting behavior for a selected U.S. election, I produce evidence to suggest that the spatial arrangement of partisans influences crossover behavior in the study area, although not uniformly for members of the two major American political parties.

Opening the Door: Women Candidates and California's Primary Elections

This article examines how gender interacts with primary electoral institutions to affect electoral outcomes in California's Assembly primaries from 1992 to 2006. The hypothesized relationship between candidate success and election type utilizes theories of candidate gender stereotyping and voter behavior. Therefore, women are expected to become advantaged as the primary changes from closed to more open rules due to cross-over voting and independent voters. The results show that both Republican and Democratic women enjoy greater success under the more open rules. These findings have important implications for theories about gender and politics. Institutions, namely primary election structures, matter.

Strategic voting in open primaries: evidence from Rush Limbaugh’s “operation chaos”

Open primaries create the possibility of strategic crossover voting. On his March 3, 2008 program and subsequent broadcasts, radio personality Rush Limbaugh called on his listeners to extend the Democratic presidential contest by crossing over to vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton. Using voter registration data from North Carolina and election return data from Indiana, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania (states with open, semi-closed, and closed primaries, respectively), I find no evidence of a Limbaugh-motivated switch in political party registration or of a large or statistically significant Limbaugh-motivated increase in voting for Sen. Clinton.

The Obama Factor: The Impact of the 2008 Presidential Election on Future Voting Rights Litigation

Some commentators have begun pointing to Barack Obama's 2008 presidential victory as singular evidence that we have overcome and resolved the problem of race in America. In particular, some have suggested that his victory marks the beginning of a post-racial era in which race bears less significance or consequence. In this Article, I focus on a particular aspect of this ongoing debate - the presence of racially polarized voting in the 2008 presidential election cycle. The commentary surrounding Obama's electoral success provides some insights into prevailing attitudes about the pace of racial progress. However, there is a more immediate and pragmatic issue for those who study and litigate vote dilution claims under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: the probative value of the 2008 presidential contest on future efforts to measure racially polarized voting -- one of the critical pieces of evidence that plaintiffs must offer to support traditional vote dilution claims. Here, I offer some preliminary observations regarding the implications of Obama's electoral success for voting rights litigants and find that no overarching conclusions about racially polarized voting can be drawn from it. Initial analysis of the 2008 presidential election outcome reveals a mixed pattern of racially polarized voting in some jurisdictions and significant cross-racial coalition building in others. Notably, exit polling results from the November 2008 general election reveal stark racial polarization in the Deep South states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina alongside exceptionally high levels of white crossover voting in the New England states of Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Maine. While Obama's victory most certainly represents significant progress in the ongoing effort to achieve political equality, courts should hesitate to substitute Obama's electoral success for a more careful assessment and localized inquiry that can help accurately determine whether racially polarized voting persists in a particular jurisdiction.

The Limbaugh Effect: A Rush to Judging Cross-Party Raiding in the 2008 Democratic Nomination Contests

This paper examines the potential for strategic Republican crossover voting in the March 4, 2008 Democratic primaries. Some observers note that conservative media figures encouraged Republicans to raid the Democratic primary in order to weaken the Democratic Party's chances in the November election. Analysis of exit poll data from 38 states suggests that Republicans may have been voting strategically in Democratic primaries, but there is little evidence that March 4th was unusual in the scope of strategic behavior.

Deracialization And Urban Racial Contexts

Building on previous literature of deracialization and white voting behavior, the author empirically tests whether the effectiveness of deracialization, measured by white crossover vote, may be conditional, dependent on urban racial contexts. The author examined 81 black candidates’ white votes in New Orleans biracial elections between 1977 and 1998. The results of ordinary least squares multiple regressions show that the differences in white crossover voting in New Orleans during the past two decades were related to black candidates’ strength. The relatively larger effect of newspaper endorsement on white crossover voting, compared to that of black incumbency, confirms previous findings regarding the powerful influence of news media on biracial elections in general and the deracialization strategy in particular. The most important finding of this research, however, is that the deracialization strategy was most effective when white voters were no longer the majority in the urban elections.

Voting at the political fault line: California's experiment with the blanket primary

List of Tables List of Figures Part One: Introduction and Background 1. California's Blanket Primary Experiment Bruce E. Cain and Elisabeth R. Gerber 2. Crossover Voting before the Blanket: Primaries versus Parties in California History Brian J. Gaines and Wendy K. Tam Cho 3. Political Reform via the Initiative Process: What Voters Think about When They Change the Rules Shaun Bowler and Todd Donovan 4. Context and Setting: The Mood of the California Electorate Mark Baldassare Part Two: Crossover Voting 5. The Causes and Consequences of Crossover Voting in the 1998 California Elections John Sides, Jonathan Cohen, and Jack Citrin 6. Should I Stay or Should I Go? Sincere and Strategic Crossover Voting in California Assembly Races R. Michael Alvarez and Jonathan Nagler 7. Peeking Under the Blanket: A Direct Look at Crossover Voting in the 1998 Primary Anthony M. Salvanto and Martin P. Wattenberg Part Three: Effects of the Blanket Primary 8. Crossing Over When It Counts: How the Motives of Voters in Blanket Primaries Are Revealed by Their Actions in General Elections Thad Kousser 9. Candidates, Donors, and Voters in California's Blanket Primary Elections Wendy K. Tam Cho and Brian J. Gaines 10. Strategic Voting and Candidate Policy Positions Elisabeth R. Gerber 11. Openness Begets Opportunity: Minor Parties and California's Blanket Primary Christian Collet 12. Thinner Ranks: Women as Candidates and California's Blanket Primary Miki Caul and Katherine Tate 13. Targets of Opportunity: California's Blanket Primary and the Political Representation of Latinos Gary M. Segura and Nathan D. Woods 14. Candidate Strategy, Voter Response, and Party Cohesion John R. Petrocik Part Four: Conclusions and Implications 15. The Blanket Primary in the Courts: The Precedent and Implications of California Democratic Party v. Jones Nathaniel Persily 16. Strategies and Rules: Lessons from the 2000 Presidential Primary Bruce E. Cain and Megan Mullin List of Contributors Index

Racial Transition and White-Voter Support for Black Candidates in Urban Elections

Traditional black threat theory predicts an inverse relationship between the size of a jurisdiction’s black population and white crossover voting. Recently, a modified black threat theory suggests that it may be more reasonable to expect a curvilinear U-shaped relationship between black density and white crossover voting, due to changes in both racial composition and white group status. Using Gary King’s Ecological Inference (EI) procedure to estimate white crossover voting at the election unit level through precinct-level data, this study examines the relationship between black density and white crossover voting across 29 biracial elections in New Orleans between 1977 and 1998. Results of our analysis support neither a negative, nor a U-shaped relationship. Rather, the shape of the relationship is an upward half-U. We explain this nonlinear relationship by suggesting that as blacks become a majority, white voters begin to cast votes for black candidates in a strategic manner.

The Positive Effect of Black Density on White Crossover Voting: Reconsidering Social Interaction Theory

Objective. Social interaction theory has received considerable attention. One limitation of previous studies has been that they did not examine how the positive effect of racial interaction on white racial tolerance may be enhanced or reduced by other factors. This article tests five hypotheses derived from the basic assumption of social interaction theory. Methods. Employing EI procedure, a newly developed ecological inference method, this study uses the precinct‐level data from New Orleans' 29 biracial elections to estimate white crossover voting at the neighborhood level. The hypotheses are tested by both ordinary least squares and weighted least squares models. Results. White crossover voting is positively related to black density. The positive effect of black density, however, is relatively weak. Other factors such as the racial composition of candidate field and election type are more important. Conclusions. Caution needs to be exercised in accepting social interaction theory. The level of racial competition in biracial elections may reverse white support for black candidates.

Racial Contexts and White Interests: Beyond Black Threat and Racial Tolerance

The impact of racial context on white voters' support for black candidates in biracial elections has drawn considerable attention from students of racial politics. Two major theories—black threat and social interaction—use different geographic units and provide conflicting explanations. The present study seeks to contribute to the resolution of the controversy by empirically examining white crossover voting at both election unit and neighborhood levels. Twenty-nine mayoral and councilmanic district elections in New Orleans from 1977 to 1998 are investigated. The findings are not consistent with the hypotheses derived from black threat and social interaction theories. Rather than a reflection of racial tolerance or hostility, the changes in white crossover voting in different racial contexts may indicate a rational and strategic adjustment on the part of white voters when they face the prospect of black electoral success.

Why Crossover Voters Are Not "Mischievous Voters"

Although extensive crossover voting in open primaries has been documented, scholars have never found empirical support for the allegation that considerable mischievous crossover voting occurs in such circumstances. Formal theorists have argued that such voting is not consistent with the voting decision logic that most voters practice, others have inferred that most voters are not equal to the sophistication of the calculations requisite to strategic voting, and still others have hypothesized that voters are induced to cross over by candidates' personalities or issues. This exploratory study presents and examines the hypothesis that mischievous crossover voting is limited because most crossover voters are segmented-partisan identifiers who at some level of the federal polity actually identify with the party whose primary they invade. Segmented partisans do cast most crossover votes, and are more likely than consistent partisans to evaluate the opposing party favorably on thermometer scales, to evaluate favorably its past governing performance, and to defect to its ticket during general elections. The hostility toward the partisan out-group, posited in The American Voter and supporting studies, thus is not characteristic of most of those who cast crossover votes.

Recent Elections and Black Politics: The Maturation or Death of Black Politics?

Black politics is not maturing and may be degenerating.' To explicate this thesis, let me borrow from Nelson George's (1989) critical study of Afro-American music in the post civil rights era.2 George argues that the development of crossover artists and music, and their effective marketing to mainstream white society, has resulted in the death of the music as an authentic black cultural expression. George, the former Billboard music critic, writes In the twenty years since the Great Society, which marked a high point of R&B music, the community that inspired both social change and artistic creativity has become a sad shell of itself: unhappily, while the drive behind the movement for social change was the greatest inspiration for the music, the very success of the movement spelled the end of the R&B world (1989:xiii). The new black politics initiated in the late 1960s, like the music of the era, was conceived as a social change agent, the continuation of movement politics by other means. It would indeed be sad if the conditions for its success require it to become a deracialized mainstream shell of itself (on the deracialization thesis in terms of the 1989 elections see also McCormick, 1989). Do the 1989 elections really represent a new phenomenon? Do these several elections really indicate something new in terms of candidates, issues, strategies, white crossover voting, and coalition politics? The coverage in the national press and in the early scholarly reports, including several articles in this symposium suggest that there was something entirely different, nearly beyond belief about the election of Wilder and several of the mayors. Although all elections are local in that candidates, issues, and symbols tend to be idiosyncratic, to the extent that patterns are discernible I would argue that the 1989 elections are not all that new in terms of what we know about the post civil rights pattern of black electoral coalitions and govern-

Parties and Elections in America: The Electoral Process, by L. Sandy Maisel

Parties and Elections in America: The Electoral Process, <i>by L. Sandy Maisel</i>

The Conceptualization and Measurement of Crossover Voting

The Conceptualization and Measurement of Crossover Voting

The Conceptualization and Measurement of Crossover Voting

The Conceptualization and Measurement of Crossover Voting

The Wisconsin Open Primary 1968 to 1984

Statewide surveys from the five most recent presidential primaries in Wisconsin are used to examine voting trends of independents and party identifiers in Wisconsin presidential primaries. The primary concerns are (1) the extent and direction of crossover voting, (2) election-specific factors that effect crossover voting, and (3) possible inconsistency between crossover voting and future vote choices.

Racist or Racial Voting in the 1981 Atlanta Municipal Elections

Some recent municipal elections have been interpreted as indicating that America's cities are becoming more polarized on the dimension of race. It has been hypothesized that the results observed in Atlanta in 1981 and Chicago in 1983 presage an era of voting along racial lines. This article advances an alternative hypothesis: Voters who support candidates of their own race often do so simply because they have no particular reason not to. Specifically, there may be no issue-based reason to cross racial lines. Using both precinct-level and survey data from the 1981 Atlanta municipal elections, the analysis estimates the levels of racial voting (the coincidence of a racial tie between voter and candidate), racist voting (the vote for a candidate of one's own race when an issue-based motive exists to support a candidate of the opposite race), and crossover voting.