Why Primary Voters Don’t Represent the Broader Electorate

Low Turnout and Unrepresentative Voters: America’s Primary Election Problem

By-Hank Stolz
Graphic-Radio Worcester/ Image- Clark University

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Worcester, MA-Clark University Political Science Professor Robert Boatright, author of “The Problem with Primary Voters” and co-editor of “Reforming Primary Elections,” joined Hank on Massachusetts Primary Day to examine the structural challenges facing American primary elections. Professor Boatright draws on years of research using national voter file data to explain why primary electorates consistently fail to represent the broader population. Boatright says, “You would really have to have turnout two, three times as high as it is in Massachusetts to guarantee that primary voters looked like the electorate.” His research reveals that primary voters skew older, wealthier, and more ideologically extreme than the general electorate, with turnout in Massachusetts typically ranging between 15 and 20 percent of eligible voters. When asked if early and mail-in voting can impact that percentage, Boatright says, “It raises it slightly, but again, not in a way that is necessarily representative.”

Notably, he says, roughly half of those who vote in any given primary did not participate in the previous one, making it difficult for candidates to anticipate or represent their constituents. The conversation covers the limited impact of reforms such as top-two primaries and expanded mail-in voting, “People vote in general elections because of civic duty. People don’t do that in primaries.” adds Boatright ,”People who vote in primaries tend to be motivated not by civic duty, but by competition.” He talked about the role political parties play in suppressing competition, and why media narratives drawn from low-turnout primaries can be misleading. Professor Boatright argues that consolidating all state primaries onto a single national date, as practiced in France and Argentina, would be the most effective way to increase turnout and produce a more representative primary electorate.  “The big problem with American primaries is that they are spread out through the year. This year…there are 21 different dates this year on which primaries across the 50 US states are being held.” He says, “A lot of people simply don’t even know when their primary is. States move primaries about all the time.”

Primaries are the subject of Boatright’s latest book, “The Problem with Primary Voters,” co-authored with Caroline Tolbert and Nathan K. Micatka; and “Reforming Primary Elections,”  his latest co-edited book with professor Richard Barton of Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs.