HAS THE PRIMARY PROCESS PROVED ITS MERIT IN 2008?

Over the last nine presidential elections, the primary-caucus method of nominating candidates has often failed to choose each party’s strongest candidate. The major parties knew the system was flawed, leading to different methods of nomination and allocation of delegates between the two parties and among the states. Frustrated by the ability of factions unallied with the party organization to win the nominations of George McGovern in 1972 and Jimmy Carter in 1976, the Democrats in 1984 created superdelegates, who are members of Congress and other party leaders not bound to any candidate, but more likely to support the establishment choice against insurgents. What would happen if the superdelegates influence the choice of a nominee other than the plurality winner in the primaries? Until now, the superdelegates have been superfluous delegates, because they have not influenced the party’s nomination.

The rationale for the primary system is that it increases the public’s role in the process. Nevertheless, close to one-half of all voting-age citizens failed to vote in presidential elections. For most Americans, the presidential primary was one more election (and a difficult one to understand) in a nation which has more elections and fewer voters in relation to population than other industrial democracies.

The percentage of adult citizens voting in recent national elections has been well over 8o percent in West Germany, New Zealand, and France, over 75 in Canada, Great Britain, and Japan, and just barely 50 percent in the U.S. Other representative governments do not conduct elections to choose candidates. Critics argue that, to increase turnout, we should deal with the causes of non-voting, not increase the number of elections in which a large proportion of the electorate will not participate. In the nine presidential elections since reform, the highest turnout was 55.3 percent of potential voters in 1992, the lowest 49 percent in 1996. By contrast, turnout was never below 60 percent in the five previous elections.

For the party in power, the primary process has until now been little more than a reaffirmation of the power of the governing party’s hierarchy. In the nine elections since the primary reforms, every presidential candidate of the party in power has been either the incumbent or his vice president. For the party out of power, the nomination was often won by a candidate with a minority of primary votes. McGovern received barely 25 percent in 1972 (the first election in which the primaries determined the choice of the candidates), Carter 39 percent in 1976, Mondale 38 percent in 1984, and Dukakis 43 percent in 1988. Even those figures exaggerate their primary support, because they include larger proportions after other contenders left the race. Even incumbents sometimes barely eked out a majority. Ford received 53 percent in the 1976 primaries and Carter 51 percent in 1980, almost certain signs that they faced defeat in the election.

Primary voters tend to vote for their first choice, not necessarily their party’s best choice. That would be not the single most popular candidate but the one least unacceptable to the party faithful, independents, and dissident members of the other party. At its best, the old-fashioned conventions of party leaders and office-holders achieved that, because they wanted nothing so much as a winner. By contrast, the primary system reflected the judgment of a small proportion of the electorate from a few atypical states, required vast amounts of money to finance a campaign, made more difficult the candidacy of experienced members of Congress, diminished the importance of the party organization greatly reduced the relevance of the national convention, and has been repeatedly reformed by party commissions in election years without making it more likely to result in the selection of the strongest candidate within each party.

These are powerful arguments against the method of presidential nomination employed in the past nine elections, except for the fact that they seem contradicted by this year’s nomination process. Neither party had an obvious successor, the field seemed – or over time came to seem -- wide open and narrowed only as voters expressed their preferences, both parties will nominate an incumbent Senator (leading to only the third election in which a sitting Senator is elected as president), and the candidates have aroused strong support among voters who have not played a prominent role in the past.

It is almost certain that, in the absence of the primary system, the Republican Party would have chosen someone other than Senator John McCain, whose opposition to George W. Bush in 2000, support for campaign reform, and lack of support within the party’s congressional leadership would have doomed his candidacy. It is probable that several Governors, ex-Governors and other members of Congress would have competed for both parties’ nomination. The groundswell of support for Obama would never have taken place, and he most certainly would not have been chosen as the Democratic candidate.

The primary process has had unprecedented success in inspiring participation and choosing highly regarded candidates. Barring some unexpected event, the turnout this November is likely to far exceed that of recent elections, and this is entirely attributable to the campaign that has been waged until now. The flaws remain. The process takes place too long before the election. The amount of money it takes to compete is obscene and violates a basic premise of the democratic process. The ordering of the primaries and caucuses is arbitrary, creating unforeseen and irrational advantages for one or another candidate. And yet…this time very capable candidates have emerged.

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There remains at this writing a small possibility that the primary process can fail. If, despite a national Obama plurality in primary and caucus votes and elected delegates, Clinton decisively wins the Texas and Ohio primaries, and then wins the Democratic nomination by winning the support of a sufficient number of superdelegates, including a strategy of seating the now-barred Florida and Michigan delegates, the Democrats will bitterly divide, possibly leading to their defeat in the presidential election, and almost certainly leading to radical reform in the nomination process.