Taking One for the Team: Forward-Looking Strategic Voting in Primary Elections

• In Event: Primary Voters: Sincere, Strategic, or Silent?

Abstract

Do voters choose who to support during primary elections strategically to give their party’s nominee the best chance of winning the general election? This paper examines an understudied consequence of resurgent partisanship among the American electorate. With fewer competitive districts and fewer vote switchers, partisan primaries are increasingly decisive in choosing elected officials. And with voters feeling increasingly negatively toward their out-party, voters feel similarly strongly about keeping the other party from winning general elections. But are primary voters willing to vote for their non-preferred primary candidate in order to help their party win the general election and keep the other party out of power? I answer this question in three ways. First, I conduct a pilot survey among validated primary voters and find polling information that denotes one hypothetical primary candidate over another as more “electable” increases support for the electable candidate, especially when the general election is expected to be competitive. Second, I run survey experiments among likely primary voters in four 2024 primaries in competitive congressional districts to test the effect of information about primary candidate’s general election chances on vote intention when the election has real stakes. Finally, I run a conjoint experiment among the same likely primary voters in which candidate characteristics, including their general election chances, are randomized to gauge the durability of strategic voting. Are partisans still willing to vote for their non-preferred candidate to give their party a better chance of winning when that candidate disagrees with them on their most important issue? Together, these experiments reveal whether primary voters are willing to vote strategically when there are real stakes to their party winning or losing the general election, and what they are willing to give up to help their party win.

Author

• Hayley Cohen, Columbia University