For more than a decade, California has had a unique primary system in which voters can choose candidates regardless of party and the top two candidates advance to the general election.
The system allows two candidates from the same party to face off in the general election — a situation that has happened in various races, including for the U.S. Senate in 2018.
California departs from traditional American primaries, in which voters from each party pick the candidate who will represent them on a general election ballot. Instead, all of the candidates from all of the parties are listed on the same primary ballot.
The system is akin to how many nonpartisan municipal elections operate, with a wide field of candidates on the primary ballot, followed by a two-person runoff in the general election.
The so-called “top two” voting system was instituted in 2011. Proponents argued that it would help moderates and independents move to the fore while encouraging voters to pay more attention to the electoral process. Instead of playing to their base, candidates are incentivized to appeal to a wider audience.
But critics say the system can force out third parties, leave voters without options in general elections and splinter the vote in unusual ways. In this year’s governor’s race, for instance, Democrats panicked for months that they would be shut out of the general election despite having an overwhelming registration advantage in the state. That’s because they had several prominent candidates splitting the vote, while Republicans had only two serious contenders.
In response, a Democratic strategist started a campaign last month to “Undo the Top Two.” The proposal, backed by a coalition of Democrats, Republicans and leaders of the state’s Green and Libertarian parties, would revert California’s primaries to a traditional system in which one candidate from each party advances to the general election.
Backers want to place it on the ballot in 2028.
It is unclear how much impact the top-two voting system has had on California’s politics. One paper from 2020 found that the rules “reduced ideological extremity among legislators.” But other research found the system’s effect inconclusive. And the evidence for voter turnout is mixed and complicated by efforts to increase voter participation, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan think tank.
When the legislation creating the current system was passed, the idea was to “box out the more extreme candidates,” said Eric McGhee, a senior fellow and policy director at the institute.
He said he thought the question was less about whether it had led to more moderate politics, and more about “is the amount of moderation produced enough to be worth the change?”
