When California adopted the top-two open primary system in 2010, proponents argued it would help make the state more moderate because candidates would be compelled to court voters across the political spectrum.
But since then, most races still end in typical partisan fashion with one Democrat and one Republican duking it out to advance to the general election, report CalMatters’ Ben Christopher and Jeanne Kuang.
So is it time to scrap the system altogether?
As blue as California is, it’s still rare for two Democrats to face one another in a statewide general election contest, said Andrew Sinclair, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College. Though the state is reliably left-leaning enough to have never elected a Republican to statewide office since 2006, it’s not so overwhelmingly Democratic that two Democrats regularly advance.
There are some exceptions, however, such as the insurance commissioner’s race where two Democrats are currently holding the top spots.
Democratic and GOP voters alike also tend to treat the top-two system as if it were a partisan primary — coalescing around the candidate they consider the strongest representative of their party — even though the system is officially nonpartisan.
This, in part, helps box out candidates with more nuanced ideological distinctions — such as Matt Mahan, the moderate Democratic mayor of San Jose who ran for governor criticizing “extremism on both sides” and received 4% of the vote — or upstart progressives.
- Eric McGhee, a political researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California: “The evidence we have of how voters view these contests is that they don’t have a clue who the moderate or the liberal is. … It’s always a good bet that voters are way way way less tapped into the nuances of what’s going on than you are if you’re interested in politics.”
The top-two primary system is also vulnerable to “cynical gaming” in which one candidate boosts the candidate they consider easier to beat in the general election. In the 2024 primary, for example, a super PAC backing Democratic U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff put millions of dollars behind GOP candidate Steve Garvey, undercutting Democratic former Rep. Katie Porter’s chances.
Critics of the top-two system, such as Democratic political consultant Steve Maviglio who has filed a proposed ballot measure to repeal the system, are pushing to either return to partisan primaries or adopt ranked choice voting, which allows voters to rank their candidates by preference.
Votes are still being counted. Check out CalMatters’ live election results.
