[EL] CA SoS election

[Rob Richie]

Glad to have reformers in this race, but I would be stunned if the the Top
2 was anything other than Peterson and Padilla, relatively comfortably, and
then a win for Padilla in the fall in this Democrat-leaning state.  We'll
see soon enough.

Top 2 races rarely are as interesting as people seem to think they might be
 because of how the first round winnows the field to just two candidates.
Witness the fact that 48 out of 49 top two races for Congress and statewide
office in Washington state in 2008-2012 have featured a D and R. When it's
that outcome, the regular partisanship of voters controls the November
election. Things are might be shaken up in November when one major party
doesn't get to the November ballot - like the bizarre CA-31 congressional
race in 2012 where only R's made the November ballot in a Democratic
district, and about half of Democratic voters abstained in November.

We did a couple indepth analyses of top two in California and Washington
and post them, along with related analysis, at:
http://www.fairvote.org/reforms/instant-runoff-voting/top-four-elections/

See some examples from Washington state analysis below. We were intrigued
to see what a difference it would make for the system working on its own
terms if four candidates advanced to November, with the increased
candidacies handled by use of ranked choice voting. As one example, most
congressional race would have more than one candidate from the majority
party on the November ballot without shutting out the second biggest party
nor being so effective at keeping third parties and independents off the
November ballot.

 www.fairvote.org/research-reports/top-two-in-washington-state/

.* The Top Two system still maintains the Democrat versus Republican norm:
all  four U.S. Senate and all 16 partisan state executive races had one
Democrat and one Republican in the general election. All but one of the 28
congressional race over three cycles were Democrat versus Republican, and
the one exception had a dominant frontrunner who won with over 80% of the
vote.

* Top Two discourages broad fields of candidates in the preliminary: 90% of
state legislative races eliminated one or zero candidates in the
preliminary, and the number of candidates participating is decreasing.

* Few participate in the preliminary election: about twice as many voters
participate in the general election as the preliminary election, and this
does not seem to be changing. By increasing the importance of the first
election, Top Two allows a smaller and less representative group to decide
many outcomes.

- Rob


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rob Richie
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On Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 1:07 PM, Douglas Johnson
<djohnson at ndcresearch.com>wrote:

> I would disagree with Rick's characterization of the Sec. of State race,
> but only to add that Pete Peterson is also a significant "reform"
> candidate.
>
>
>
> The difference between Peterson on one side and Cressman and Schnur on the
> other is Peterson's focus is on reforming things that are under the
> Secretary of State's control (campaign disclosure systems, business
> registration systems, voter machine certification, etc.). In contrast,
> Schnur and Cressman are focused on using the SoS post as a pulpit to
> attempt to influence things the Secretary has no control over (a
> constitutional amendment to reverse *Citizens United *for Cressman, and
> campaign donation limits for Schnur).
>
>
>
> (Disclosure: I haven't publicly endorsed any of the three candidates
> mentioned above, and consider myself friends with all three).
>
>
>
> -          Doug
>
>
>
> Douglas Johnson, Fellow
>
> Rose Institute of State and Local Government
>
> at Claremont McKenna College
>
> douglas.johnson at cmc.edu
>
> 310-200-2058
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
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>
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