So California’s Proposition 14 passed with 54% of the vote. California now has a “jungle primary.” It may yet be subject to litigation, although Richard Hasen doubts that the litigation will be successful. I noted earlier the research suggesting that the type of primary has little impact on legislative polarization, despite the claims of Prop 14’s proponents.
Here are some political scientists’ perspectives on Prop 14: Seth Masket, Jon Bernstein, Travis Ridout, John Pitney, and Barbara Sinclair. Reading these, I detect a theme!
Ridout:
bq. But the lesson from Washington State is that politics as usual is unlikely to change much.
Pitney:
bq. …don’t expect the new primary system to do much about it.
When California had a blanket primary for a brief spell, I was involved in some research on it. Based on that and other research, my sense of Prop 14, and a lot of political reforms generally, dovetails with what Ridout and Pitney say. In our research on the blanket primary (see this book), Jack Citrin, Jon Cohen, and I wrote this:
bq. The blanket primary will lead to neither the millennium envisaged by its advocates nor the apocalypse predicted by its detractors.
I suspect the same will be true of the jungle primary.