Have California’s open primaries made us less biased?

When California adopted a top-two open primary system in 2010, supporters argued it would help make the state more moderate because candidates would be forced to court voters from across the political spectrum.

But since then, most races have still ended in typical partisan fashion with one Democrat and one Republican making it to the general election, CalMatters’ Ben Christopher and Jeanne Kuang report.

So, is it time to ditch the system entirely?

As blue as California is, it’s still rare for two Democrats to face each other in a statewide general election race, said Andrew Sinclair, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College. While the state is reliably left-leaning enough not to have elected a Republican to statewide office since 2006, it’s not so overwhelmingly Democratic that two Democrats regularly advance.

However, there are some exceptions, such as the insurance commissioner race, where two Democrats currently hold the top spots.

Democratic and Republican voters also tend to treat the first-two system as a partisan primary — rallying around the candidate they see as the strongest representative of their party — even though the system is officially nonpartisan.

That, in part, helps elect candidates with more nuanced ideological differences — like Matt Mahan, the moderate Democratic mayor of San Jose who ran for governor criticizing “extremism on both sides” and got 4 percent of the vote — or progressive frontrunners.

• Eric McGeepolitical researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California: “The evidence we have about how voters view these races is that they have no idea who is the moderate or the liberal. … It’s always a good bet that voters are a lot less involved in 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 games,” in which one candidate promotes the candidate he deems easier to beat in the general election. In the 2024 primary, for example, a super PAC supporting Democratic U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff put millions of dollars behind GOP candidate Steve Garvey, undermining former Democratic congresswoman 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 for either a return to party primaries or the adoption of ranked-choice voting, which allows voters to rank their candidates by preference.

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