[EL] Wall Street Journal article on immigration reform and top-two systems

[Richard Winger]

The Wall Street Journal article that ran today "Do Non-Partisan Primary Elections Make Immigration Legislation More Likely?" does not cite any academic research about whether top-two systems indeed cause less polarization and partisanship.  I had an e-mail exchange with the reporter a week ago and I referred her to 2013 scholarly articles by political scientists on that question.  Articles that appeared in 2013 on this subject are the McGhee-Masket-Shor-Rogers-McCarty paper, "A Primary Cause of Partisanship?  Nomination systems and Legislator Ideology?"; the Norrander-Stephens-Wendland Paper, "Primary Type, Polarization of State Electorates and the Ideological Composition of Primary Electorates"; the Ahler-Citrin-Lenz paper, "An experimental test on the 2012 primary"; the Kousser-Phillips-Shor paper, "Reform and Representation:  Assessing California's Top-Two Primary and Redistricting Commission", and the Rogowski paper, "Primary Systems, Candidate
 Platforms, and Ideological Extremity."

Those papers don't support the reporter's conclusion.  Instead she quoted one California Republican Congressman, Jeff Denham; and one policy analyst for the California Business Roundtable, Robert Lapsley.  The California Business Roundtable supported the top-two system in 2010 when it passed.  There is no indication that Mr. Lapsley ever did any research on this topic.

The article talks about the Paul Cook-Gregg Imus race in the 8th US House district in the Mohave Desert district in California, but there is no indication that Paul Cook is "liberal" on immigration.  As the WSJ article says, "Mr. Cook has yet to flesh out his views on immigration legislation."  However, he is not likely to take a liberal attitude, because his district is very conservative.  He placed 2nd in the primary to another Republican, Gregg Imus.  In that primary there were no Democrats on the ballot (there were only 7 Republicans and one independent).  If Cook takes a liberal stance, he knows that will fuel a strong race against him by another Republican in June 2014, which is just as easy to happen to him in a top-two primary as in a semi-closed primary.


The article talks about Republican Congressman Jeff Denham in the San Joaquin Valley.  One might think from reading the article that he is a liberal Republican.  Actually, his voting record when he was in the legislature was so conservative that Democrats successfully placed a recall on the ballot against him, although he easily survived the recall.  Wiki says he votes with his party 95% of the time.  No other Republican ran against him in the June 2012 primary.  The district is closely balanced between the two major parties, and is 25% Hispanic.  Obviously a Republican like that will tread carefully on immigration, no matter what the primary system is.  Republican Party leaders will defend him because otherwise the seat could be lost to the Democrats.


If anyone wants links to any of the 5 papers mentioned above, e-mail me privately.  

 
Richard Winger
415-922-9779
PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147
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