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Course: US government and civics > Unit 6
Lesson 7: Electing a presidentOpen primaries, closed primaries, and blanket primaries
Primary elections, a key part of the democratic process, can be closed, open, or blanket. In closed primaries, only party members vote. Open primaries allow any voter to participate. Blanket primaries pit all candidates against each other, with the top two advancing to the general election.
Want to join the conversation?
- What are the criticisms of blanket primary. Also, do primaries take before caucuses?(4 votes)
- How do you get a registration for a certain party?(2 votes)
- You go to the primary and have an option of choosing the party(2 votes)
- Did the election effect anyone like the rival or other voters?(2 votes)
- Can you rephrase your question? I can't parse what you are asking.(2 votes)
Video transcript
- [Presenter] Let's talk
about primary elections, which are often known as primaries. One way to think about them is that they're just preliminary elections used to get down to a
fewer number of candidates. A very simple example would be let's say there's a congressional
seat in your district, and there's three folks who
are interested in that position who associate themselves
with the Democrats. And let's say there's also
three folks in your district who are interested in
running for that position who associate themselves
with the Republicans. There are some situations
where you can have just a big preliminary election where they all run against each other. We'll talk about that in a second. But, usually you have a situation where they try to think about, well, let's just pick one to
represent the Democrats, and let's just pick one to
represent the Republicans. And so that's where the
primary election would happen. So you would have a Democratic primary where these folks would
run against each other, and whoever gets the most
votes would then go on to represent the Democratic
Party in that election. So let's say that person wins, then they will go on into
the general election. Likewise, these three folks
would run against each other in the Republican primary, and whoever gets the most votes, let's say it's that
person right over there, they would go to the general election to go against likely the
Democrat right over here. So this is the person who
would go against the Democrat. And then they are going to
compete in the general election against each other, head to head, and then whoever gets that would
get the congressional seat. Now even in this type of primary, you could call this a partisan primary, there's an interesting question. Who votes in this
Democratic Party primary? Who votes in that? And, who votes in the
Republican Party primary? And there's actually two systems for this, or two general buckets,
and there's some nuances from region to region. But one way is that only
registered Democrats could vote in the Democratic primary, pick who represents their
party in the general, and only registered Republicans can vote in the Republican primary. That situation where only registered folks can vote in their respective primaries, that is called a closed primary. It's called closed because it's not open to just anyone who wants
to vote in the primary. Only the people who have already registered in that party can vote. Now you can imagine the opposite of that is the open primary, so open primary, where even though these
are partisan primaries, you are trying to figure out who's going to represent the Democrats, and who's going to
represent the Republicans, you can allow people who are either not affiliated with a party or even people who are
affiliated with the other party to vote in your primary. So, for example, in
this Democratic primary, there could be, for some reason, folks who feel passionate
about this candidate who are actually registered Republicans but who they wanna vote in this primary. Or you could have people
who are unaffiliated who would vote in this primary if we are dealing with an open primary. Now one interesting question is, is how could the dynamics change if we're dealing with a open
versus a closed primary? Well, political scientists
like to think a lot about this, and even states like to think about this, in terms of what is appropriate? What is most representative? What gives the people of that state the fairest voice in their elections? Now people who like closed
primaries might say, well look, we're trying to figure out who represents the Democratic Party; it
should only be Democrats. We're trying to figure out who represents the Republican Party; it
should only be Republicans. Now criticism of closed
primaries might be, well, if you limit who gets
to vote in the primary, then these candidates are only
going to cater to the base. They're only going to
cater to the interests of people in their
party, and in particular, they might cater to people who are at the extremes of their party. For example, let's say we
have a situation like this. Let's say that this is the
population right over here, and people at the right end,
these are conservatives. Conservatives. Conservative. And these folks right
over here are liberal. And if you were to look at
the population as a whole, let's say the distribution
in the population. Let's say it looks something like this. You have some people here
who are quite liberal, and then you have actually
the bulk of the people who are some place in between, and then you have another bump of folks who are actually quite conservative. So you would guess that, hey, look, a view that's someplace in
between, maybe a moderate view, would actually maybe be most
representative of the people. But if you have closed
primaries, what might happen? Well, the Democratic primary, the people who would be eligible to vote, would be these people right over here. It would be these people, the people who have registered as Democrats. And in the Republican
primary, well, if it's closed, only the registered
Republicans would vote, maybe these people right over here. And these people in the middle, these would be the
unaffiliated-with-a-party people. And so, if you have
different candidates here, let's say that this is candidate one, where they're here on the spectrum. This is candidate two, which
is here on the spectrum, and candidate three is
here on the spectrum. You could imagine that
for this population, they're all going to say things
that speak to this group. And in particular, they might actually, the person who wins, might
actually be very successful of getting the people at the
extreme left right over here. And so that person maybe is a person who goes off to the general election. Likewise, the same
thing might be happening on the Republican side. You have the different candidates. Maybe their personal views
put 'em right over here. And it's this person who
is furthest to the right who's really able to appeal
to the folks right over here who ends up winning and
represents the Republican Party. Well then what happens
in the general election? The entire population
has to pick between folks that actually are more
indicative of either extreme. That maybe the closed primary system, it wouldn't have been
so good for a candidate who is reasonably moderate
on the Democratic side. Maybe someone is there, or a candidate who is right over here. Or maybe there's a candidate whose views are right in the middle. First of all, if they
want to represent a party, they would have to moot
pick one of these parties. And then to have a shot, they
would have to represent views that would be to the left or to the right of where they truly are,
and maybe they wouldn't have as good of a shot as the people who actually are quite liberal or the folks who are actually
are quite conservative. So that's a criticism
of the closed primary. An open primary might make
this a little bit better, because you have these
registered Democrats here. But folks from here might decide, hey, I wanna go vote there as well. So they might moderate things. Or folks from here might say, hey, I wanna go vote here as well. Now critics of an open primary would say, well those aren't the people who really are registered in that party. And you could also have
a phenomenon of rating, where people maybe on the Republican side could say, look, you know what? I know who's gonna win here. The Republican primary
doesn't need my vote. I'm gonna go and try to pick the weakest candidate on the other side so that in the general election, my candidate has the best shot. Now third type of primary is known as a blanket primary, often a nonpartisan blanket primary. In a nonpartisan blanket primary, instead of going through
this partisan process, all the candidates here would go into one preliminary election. And in that preliminary election, the top two candidates would then go on to the general election. So two candidates are going to move on in a blanket primary, a
nonpartisan blanket primary, and what's interesting there
is you can actually get two candidates from the same party going. Proponents of a blanket primary say, hey, this is the fairest of it all. Instead of making things partisan, just let everyone run
against everyone else, and the top two will then
get to the general election. Now you'll see all three of
these in the United States at congressional elections
or even statewide elections. But if we're thinking about
presidential elections, we're thinking mainly about these two. And when we're talking
about presidential election, these are part of primary season where it's thinking
about how many delegates candidates would get during
the national convention where they actually pick their candidate. I'll leave you there. It's an interesting way to think about the different ways of voting, especially voting in a preliminary way to get down to a fewer
number of candidates. I'll let you think about
which one you prefer.