Are Democratic Voters Willing to Engage in Crossover Primary Voting in 2024?

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

Abstract

When would partisans choose to participate in another party’s primary? This study explores the conditions under which voters decide to engage in crossover voting, particularly within the context of U.S. primary presidential elections. Existing literature on crossover voting in primaries has focused on primary election types (Kaufmann et al., 2003), election laws (Thornburg, 2023), and incumbency (Alvarez and Nagler, 2002, p. 121), among other factors. However, less attention has been paid to individual-level motivations for crossover voting. The study addresses this gap by examining how voters’ perceptions of the opposing party’s potential candidate, as portrayed by an information source, impact their likelihood of participating in their state’s Republican primary election.

We examine the willingness of Democratic, independent, and unaffiliated anti-Trump voters to vote strategically in the 2024 Republican presidential primaries as a means to deny Trump a second term. More specifically, we hypothesize that exposure to news describing Donald Trump as a “threat to democracy” will induce voters to perceive him as worse than a second Republican candidate, thereby increasing their willing to become crossover voters. Voters who view Trump as an "existential threat" should be more likely to engage in crossover voting than those who perceive him as "just as bad" as any other Republican candidate.

To test this, we field a survey experiment prior to the New Hampshire Republican primary, assessing whether priming considerations of the potential for former president Trump to engage in authoritarian behavior heightens the willingness to engage in crossover voting. Our study contributes to ongoing debates surrounding the possibility of crossover voting in elections post-2016.

Authors

• Yul Min Park, University of Pittsburgh

• Jonathan Woon, University of Pittsburgh