The Trend Toward Open Primaries

In recent years, states have changed electoral rules to admit voters who do not register with a party. Among the 44 states with some sort of primary in at least one party, 29 now have either open or modified open contests.¹

More important is the fact that the primary schedule has shifted to concentrate more open and modified open primaries in the early weeks of the campaign. In 2000, two-thirds of the open primaries and five-sixths of the modified open primaries took place in weeks 1–7, while half of the closed primaries occurred in weeks 9–20.

Many political observers disagree about the merits of allowing undeclared voters into party primaries. Critics of open primaries con tend that they prevent parties from framing a coherent message and invite meddling from the opposition. They argue further that voters who lack a long-term attachment to a party will be less knowledgeable about its potential nominees and less committed to its viability. In contrast, proponents of open primaries cite democratic norms that all voters should participate in the selection of presidential nominees. Some advocates further contend that open primaries enable parties to expand their base by bringing new voters into the fold.

This debate gained significance in the 2000 primary as John McCain posted early successes against George Bush in the Republican primaries, seemingly with the aid of undeclared voters. In addition, New Hampshire's contest was often described as a battle between McCain and Democrat Bill Bradley for the undeclared vote. Paolino and Shaw (2001) have demonstrated that McCain's campaign could not succeed over the long run, but the question remains whether the introduction of undeclared voters added a new element of uncertainty to an already unpredictable process.

Do Undeclared Voters Make Primaries More Volatile?

At the heart of the debate over open primaries is a presumption among political observers that partisan registrants and undeclared voters have different attitudes and information about politics and behave differently with respect to elections. Findings from early research on voting behavior support this view (c.f. Campbell et al. 1960). Yet, subsequent research indicates that primary voters and general election voters are quite similar (Geer 1989; Norrander 1992), and that independent voters behave very much like weak partisans (Dennis 2002; Keith et al. 1992). There is little systematic evidence about the differences between registered partisans and undeclared voters in primaries, however. Instead, studies of primary elections have used party identification rather than registration to analyze voters (Bartels 1988; Geer 1989; Norrander 1992). This approach typically omits pure independents and assumes that weak partisans and independent leaners vote in the party with which they identify.

Table 1 indicates that 20% of undeclared New Hampshire voters self-identified as pure independents. In addition, more than 50% identified as partisan leaners. These voters may feel the pull of partisanship less keenly at the beginning of the election season, during the New Hampshire primary, for example, than at its ending. Furthermore, undeclared voters may differ in their receptivity to campaign stimuli. If they pay less attention to politics or have less information about candidates, they may be more sensitive to campaign effects when exposed to them, or may ignore the campaign altogether and show no effects.

Most important, unlike registered partisans, undeclared voters must select a primary before casting their ballot. To vote for John McCain, they must first request a Republican ballot. The order of these decisions has an important methodological implication because it ultimately truncates the vote choice. Conventional regression techniques consequently overestimate the likelihood that any voter chooses Bush when Republican primary voters are the sole basis for calculating the probabilities. Yet, the political science literature reveals very little about how the sequencing of voter decisions works. Do voters first pick the primary of the party to which they most closely identify and then select their preferred candidate? Does their candidate preference determine the choice of primary? Does this ordering of choices affect the outcome of the election? To answer these questions, we employ a selection model using data from our four-wave panel survey from the 2000 New Hampshire presidential primary.²

In this model, voters first decide in which primary to vote and then for whom to vote.³

Measures and Methods

New Hampshire is a good setting for investigating the influence of undeclared voters in the primary process because citi- zens who registered as “undeclared” for the 2000 election cycle slightly outnumbered registered partisans in either party. In addition, the New Hampshire primary is unusual in its high salience among voters. Turnout is consistently high; well over 50% in 2000. Finally, the information environment is extremely rich as candidates, groups, and media lavish resources on the contest (Vavreck et al. 2002; Fowler et al. forthcoming). In short, undeclared voters have exceptional opportunities to learn about the candidates in both parties as the primary contest unfolds.

Drawing from the work of Patterson (1980), Bartels (1988), Geer (1989), Popkin (1991), Abramson et al. (1992), Norrander (1992), and Vavreck et al. (2002), we focus on the key variables that appear to influence voters' decisions in primary elections.⁴

These include: demographic characteristics, such as age, sex, education and income; party identification using the National Election Study (NES) standard seven-point scale; respondents' self-reported party registration; contact with specific candidates;⁵ and expectations about candidates' viability and electability.⁶ In order to measure information levels during the primary campaign, we use a respondent's selfdeclared level of attention to the campaign, including four categories from “a lot of attention” to “no attention.” We measure party identification with a branching format of the traditional seven-point NES self-placement question. We also rely on respondents to indicate their party registration (Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, or Undeclared). For voters' expectations about election outcomes, we use measures of candidate viability and electability. In the model, substantively interesting variables are interacted with whether the respondent is an undeclared voter.⁷

Results⁸

We initially employed several other variables in the models. We eliminated variables measuring uncertainty, the timing of vote decisions, and general political attention due to very small effects and lack of significance. We removed our measures of affinity for candidates, such as candidate traits and thermometer ratings, for other reasons. The traits questions, which tapped voter opinions about trustworthiness and leadership characteristics, were all uniformly high (70 degrees) and showed little variation across candidates or over time. The thermometer variables appeared to serve as voters' summary judgments about the candidates and the voters' intention to support them, rather than as exogenously determined dispositions toward the candidates. Although both types of measures proved useful in assessing the overall levels of support for the candidates, they masked the impact of other important causes of the vote choice.

The results of the sample selection model suggest that registering as an undeclared voter had no direct effect on either the choice of primary election or the candidate, controlling for many factors.⁹

As Table 2 indicates, there do not appear to be systematic differences between partisan registrants and undeclared registrants in terms of their probability of voting in a party primary or of voting for a particular candidate.¹⁰ Among undeclared voters, 60% chose to vote in the Republican primary, but among all registered partisans, a very similar 62% chose the Republican primary. In sum, the Republican primary was a popular choice for all types of voters.

Direct candidate contact had an effect solely on the vote, as it did in the 1996 New Hampshire primary (Vavreck et al. 2002).¹¹

However, there were no differences between undeclared and registered voters in their response to candidates. Meeting McCain at a rally or in person increased voters' chances of voting for him by 9%, while meeting Bush increased voters' chances of voting for him by 29%. Despite the favorable influence of contact with Bush, the overall probability of voting for McCain was still higher because more people supported him overall.

Results from the Democratic choice model were similar. Meeting Gore raised the probability of voting for him by 27%, and meeting Bradley raised chances of voting for him by 18%. Interestingly, Bradley did not make as many visits to New Hampshire as McCain, especially in the late weeks of the campaign. This may explain why McCain was able to leverage the increasing probability of voting for him among people who met him while Bradley was not.

Candidate contact in the form of telephone calls did have a differential effect on the choice of primary among undeclared voters, however, at least among Republicans. Registered partisans were 16% more likely to choose the Republican primary after receiving a call, but undeclared voters were 9% less likely to select that primary after receiving a call from a GOP candidate. The ineffectiveness of telephone calls in mobilizing voters is consistent with our earlier work on the 1996 primary (Vavreck et al. 2002) and Gerber and Green's (2000) study of turnout in New Haven. Direct mail did produce mobilization effects that were similar for partisans and undeclared registrants.

Being an undeclared voter, however, did condition the effects of other important variables. For example, party identification clearly motivated self-declared partisans to select their party's primary, although it had no effect over their candidate choice. For registered partisans, shifting self-identification from Independent to Weak Democrat increased the probability of voting in the Democratic primary by 24%, holding all else equal with other variables at their means. In contrast, a similar shift in party identification among undeclared voters was about 5% less.

Status as an undeclared voter also conditioned the effect of gender on the choice of both party primary and candidate. Although women generally had a higher probability of voting in the Democratic primary, undeclared women were 10% less likely to vote in the Democratic primary than their partisan counterparts, all else equal and holding all other variables at their mean. Undeclared women were not only less likely to choose the Democratic primary, but were also 19% more likely to select Bush than their registered counterparts. Whatever mechanism drew undeclared women away from the Democratic primary in greater numbers than registered women also seems to have induced them to vote for Bush instead of McCain.

Although undeclared voters were less constrained by party identification, our results indicate that McCain would have won the primary if it had been restricted to Republicans. Among people who self-identified as Republicans, whether registered or undeclared, McCain won 66% of the vote.¹²

Overall, McCain derived 31% percent of his support from people who described themselves as either Independent or some type of Democrat, while only 10% of Bush's support came from this group. Finally, McCain attracted 52% of the undeclared voters, while Bush drew only 19%. The basic story of the 2000 New Hampshire primary was McCain's high popularity among many types of voters.¹³

The most intriguing aspect of the New Hampshire primary, and one that we intend to explore more fully in subsequent work, is the high degree of volatility among all likely voters in terms of their choice of primary and candidate. As Figure 1 demonstrates, between October and January, both Bush and McCain gained voters who previously thought they might vote for someone else.¹⁴

What was unusual is that Bush lost heavily to McCain in this period and that the defections were mainly from registered Republicans rather than undeclared voters.¹⁵ McCain also gained votes from people who initially thought they were going to vote in the Democratic primary or were unsure about which primary they would choose.

Then, between January and the election in February, both Bush and McCain surprisingly lost votes as people decided to vote in the Democratic primary. All of the voters who moved from Bush to the Democratic primary were undeclared voters; while 83% of those voters who abandoned McCain also were undeclared. By examining Figure 1 with an eye toward the heavy dark lines, a pattern emerges of arrows moving away from Bush and McCain. This is exactly the opposite of what political observers argued happened in New Hampshire. From January to February, McCain did pick up votes from people who thought they were going to vote in the Democratic primary, but 72% were registered Democrats and only 18% were undeclared voters. Again, the conventional wisdom had McCain and Bradley locked in a battle for undeclared voters, when it appears that partisans were also receptive targets.

Conclusion

Taken as a whole, there is very little evidence that undeclared voters in New Hampshire behaved much differently than registered party voters—both groups gave a victory to John McCain. Although the open primary system did allow for a lot of movement across candidates and parties, in the end, most sub-groups of the electorate favored McCain over Bush. In sum, both critics and advocates of open primaries appear to have exaggerated the impact of admitting undeclared voters to the primary process. Primaries are volatile because voters and candidates are operating in a low information environment in which new facts and new impressions count heavily. Undeclared voters are subject to all of these uncertainties, to be sure, but so are registered partisans. Allowing undeclared voters to vote in nominating elections expands the size of the primary electorate, but does not seem to make an already unstable situation decidedly worse.