With increased political polarization, rules governing who can participate in primary elections have received more attention from advocates looking to reduce that polarization. That has led to an election reform movement across the country that during this past election put nine ballot measures before voters across seven states and Washington, seeking to reform current systems.

Reformers argue that party-focused systems exclude large swaths of independent voters who do not identify with any political party. Since candidates need to appeal to their party’s base in order to advance to the general election, the choices voters are left with in November tend to represent party interests.

And reformers say that new systems would make elected officials more responsive to the entire electorate, as building a broader coalition of voters would be necessary to win.

In three other states, advocates who object to changing the system put measures on the ballot to reaffirm the status quo or repeal previously adopted reforms.

Primary election systems and the rules determining who can vote in them have long been debated. A key difference between sides is the purpose of the primary — is it how political parties choose their champions? Or is it simply the first stage of a two-stage contest that determines who holds public office?

In states that are dominated by a single party, primaries are often the decisive election for who takes office. Therefore, the rules governing primaries matter greatly. I have been researching the effects of primary systems for over a decade, particularly what happens when a state changes from one system to another, and can offer some insight.

In the 2024 election, voters proved hesitant to overhaul the election systems they were already familiar with, as almost all of the reforms failed.

Voters become familiar with the electoral system they live under and can be slow to embrace changes to that system. It can take several election cycles before they fully adapt to these changes.

Primary election types

There are three major types of primary system: open primaries, where voters select which party’s ballot they want to fill out in the privacy of the voting booth; closed primaries, where voters must publicly become a member of that party in order to receive their ballot; and multi-party primaries, where all candidates are listed on a single ballot, regardless of party, and a set number of top finishers advance to the general election.

While most states have some form of open or closed primary, which are partisan in nature, reformers across the U.S. have pushed for greater adoption of multi-party primaries.

California and Washington state use a top-two multiparty primary system, where all candidates, regardless of party, are listed together and the two candidates that receive the most votes advance to the general election, even if they are from the same party.

This turns the general election into a natural runoff where someone is guaranteed to receive more than 50% of the vote. South Dakota just rejected switching to this system.

In Alaska, a top-four system was recently implemented where the four candidates who get the most votes in the primary advance and the general election is decided by a ranked choice ballot system that eliminates the candidate receiving the lowest number of votes and redistributes their votes to the voter’s next preferred candidate until a 50% majority is achieved. This allows for an “instant runoff” without holding a separate election.

A repeal of the Alaskan system was one of this year’s ballot measures. After two weeks of counting votes, the repeal appears to have failed by a narrow 0.2 percentage-point margin, leaving the new system in place.

Package deal or piecemeal

Four states — Arizona, Colorado, Idaho and Nevada — voted on ballot measures that sought to implement an Alaska-style change, combining new primary systems with a shift to a ranked choice system in the general election. Since voters were not able to pick just the elements they liked, this meant opposition to one part of the reform meant they were opposed to the entire reform.

Boise State University’s Ninth Annual Idaho Public Policy Survey, conducted a year prior to the election, found Idahoans divided over the two components of its ballot measure. While a 58% majority favored a top-four primary system, 50% said they opposed ranked choice voting. Only 29% expressed support for both options at once – the combination that the ballot measure proposed.

What followed the survey was an intense year of campaigning by both sides, with nearly US$1 million spent trying to convince Idahoans to support or oppose the effort by the week prior to Election Day. The election result for Idaho’s ballot measure? Only 30% were in favor, 70% against. Idahoans were unmoved.

Montana reformers took a different approach and ran two proposals independently: One ballot measure would have established a top-four primary system, while a second would have required a 50% plus one majority threshold to win the general election. Whether that was accomplished by ranked choice voting or a separate runoff election was left up to the state Legislature.

While both measures failed, the top-four initiative failed by only 3 points, compared with the 50% plus one initiative failing by 21 points. Voters signaled a different tolerance for the two approaches.

Arizona, in addition to a potential reform that failed by 17 points, also got to vote on a constitutional amendment that would have required partisan primaries.

The proposal would have prohibited all forms of multi-party primaries for partisan office — including superseding any local laws that said otherwise — and guaranteed that political parties would have one candidate per office on a general election ballot. It too failed — by a 16-point margin. Despite a large fundraising advantage by pro-reform advocates, Arizona voters largely resisted any type of election change this year.

The impact of political parties

Party discipline at all levels, from elected officials and party leaders to rank-and-file members, may have been influential in these outcomes.

Political parties tend to view the purpose of a primary as selecting their nominee and will resist efforts to change that. In Idaho, Republican opposition to ranked choice voting was near unified, regardless of which faction of the party one belonged to. In Colorado, opposition came from both Republicans and Democrats. It was the same in Nevada.

While opposition to top-four primary reform is not as pronounced as that against ranked choice voting, the widespread failure of these ballot measures, often by double-digit margins — only Washington, D.C.’s reform effort passed — suggests there is currently little appetite among voters for systemwide reform.

This leaves reform-minded groups with the choice of either starting over to try again or finding new ways to navigate the current systems.

Matthew May does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.