Moderate Republicans are figuring out how to defang the Trump faction using RCV
In state after state, ranked choice voting is in the middle of a battle for the heart and soul of the GOP
A battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party has been raging for several years now. Ever since Donald Trump steamrolled into the GOP primaries in 2016 and won not only the Republican nomination but the cult-like loyalty of a solid minority of the party’s voters, more moderate conservatives have been wandering like a lost tribe in the desert.
Traditional GOP leaders have been no match for Trump’s larger-than-life outlandishness. After all, what other American leader could politically survive what Trump has done: fomenting insurrection to stop a presidential succession; strong-arming a foreign country (Ukraine) to launch a fake investigation against his chief political rival; defrauding students at his bogus university; launching many racially tinged attacks, such as accusing an ethnically-Mexican federal judge of bias (even though he was born in Indiana); vastly overstating his real estate wealth when he needed to secure favorable loans, then understating it when it was time to pay taxes; bragging about sexual assault, caught in a hot-mic moment saying “when you’re a star you can do anything, grab ’em by the pussy.” The list of shameless grifts and dishonor is endless.
I’ve long been amazed at how scandals that would slay any past politicians bounce off Teflon Trump. In many cases, it increases his popularity among the right wing faithful. A large swathe of the American electorate has lost its decency and its moral compass; no amount of economic dislocation can explain this stain away. Audacity has become the order of the day, launched into hyperdrive by the steroids of digital media, and as the mini-me politicians within this largest GOP faction learn to mimic the Donald, mainstream and moderate Republicans have been drowning in the MAGA movement’s wake.
But reality doesn’t sit still for long in the world of politics. Lately there are glimmers that moderate conservatives are mobilizing to retake their party from the Trumpians. And in an increasing number of places, that strategy involves Ranked Choice Voting.
How “plurality wins all” primaries help MAGA candidates
One of the known defects of the US electoral system has been how primary elections allow extremist candidates to win a party’s nomination with a low percentage of the vote, in some cases with far less than a majority. This dynamic is particularly afoot in a large field of candidates with no incumbent, in which the highest vote-getter wins and most candidates play the role of “spoiler” to each other. This can easily result in winners having only a minority of the vote. In some cases, the winners are clearly not the choice of most voters in that election, as the majority will gets thwarted when too many candidates run and the aggregate vote splits in erratic ways.
Combine that with the fact that primary elections tend to have extremely low voter turnout in which a strongly motivated core of voters can have amplified impact, and you have the perfect conditions for the rabid MAGA camp to flourish within the Republican Party. With many Trump-backed candidates winning GOP primaries with less than a popular majority, a smallish “largest faction” of right-wing extremists have come to dominate the Republican Party.
But if a majority threshold was used to decide winners in the primary – either through a two-round runoff or an “instant” runoff i.e. RCV – many believe that MAGA candidates would lose because they can’t attract support from voters beyond their base. In the parlance of RCV, they win more first rankings than other candidates, but they don’t win enough second and third rankings. The electoral method used to decide elections really does make a big difference.
Moderate Republicans in Idaho make a stand with RCV
The latest sparks of this intra-GOP battle have popped up recently in one of the most conservative states – Idaho. A coalition of advocacy groups has begun collecting signatures on a voter initiative that would change Idaho’s elections to Alaska-style ranked choice voting contests with a Top Four primary.
Trump beat Joe Biden in Idaho with 64 percent of the vote, and only one Democrat has won Idaho since Republican Dwight Eisenhower beat Democrat Adlai Stevenson in 1952. In the gubernatorial election of 2022, the Republican candidate beat the Democrat by 40 points. In the state House, 84 percent of its members are Republican and in the Senate it’s 80 percent. That’s hardly surprising since there are four times as many registered Republicans as there are Democrats. So this is a solidly conservative red state.
But many of those conservatives are not registered as Republicans but as independents – over a third (35%) of voters are registered as “unaffiliated.” Nearly three times as many Idaho voters are independent as Democrats; unaffiliated voters are by far the second-largest “political party” in Idaho, yet these voters are not allowed to participate in the GOP’s “closed primary” where virtually all elections are decided.
A clear dividing line within the GOP is over what to do about these conservative independent voters. Do you open your primary and allow them to participate? Or keep them frozen out, and risk alienating them? The latter has been the MAGA approach, but it has been fueling a backlash that has provided an opening for moderate Republicans.
In Idaho, the independents and moderate Republicans, including the groups Reclaim Idaho and Republicans for Open Primaries, are seizing an opportunity by pushing the combo of RCV with a Top Four primary. High profile GOP leaders are getting on board, with former Republican Governor Butch Otter, as well as dozens of other past state lawmakers and officials, including the son of the current governor, endorsing the campaign. The current closed primary system, says Otter, favors more extreme candidates who have successfully ousted more moderate legislators in recent years.
“It’s time to bring some civility back into the political discourse,” said Otter at a press conference at the capitol in Boise. “Idaho deserves better and Idaho also deserves all the choices that this initiative will give them… Every registered voter should have the right to weigh in on choosing our leaders.”
Former GOP Lt. Gov. Jack Riggs is also backing the effort, saying that traditional Republicans have been forced out of the GOP while the party has been overtaken by “bullies” who are uninterested in addressing “real issues.”
“They dwell on national culture war issues — villainizing librarians, doctors, teachers and traditional conservatives — while ignoring roads, infrastructure and public schools,” says Riggs.
Other supporters of the voter initiative include the Idaho Task Force of Veterans for Political Innovation, a previous state superintendent, supreme court justice, attorney general, state treasurer, a former state party vice-chair and local elected leaders, including mayors, sheriffs and county prosecutors.
Ouch. This is turning into an internecine war between two GOP factions -- the moderates vs the MAGAs -- that is just starting to simmer. The campaign needs to collect 63,000 signatures to qualify for the November 2024 ballot.
Virginia shows how RCV could help the GOP nominate electable moderates
In other places, the intra-GOP war has already come to a boil, and again RCV is in the thick of it. The GOP in Virginia has used ranked choice voting in its primary to select its nominees for a number of offices. In 2021, now-Governor Glenn Youngkin won the RCV primary with a clear majority of Republican voters, despite a wide open seven candidate field. RCV allowed Youngkin, the more mainstream, palatable Republican, to draw broad support and defeat Amanda Chase, the polarizing “Trump-in-heels” candidate. He then went on to best the Democrat in this blue-trending state. The GOP hadn’t won a statewide office in more than a decade but in 2021 they swept all three, including lieutenant governor and attorney general.
Many Virginia Republicans credit RCV for ensuring that their nominees could unite the party during the general election. In 2022, Virginia Republicans continued this momentum, using ranked choice to nominate several congressional candidates. A report by the Center for Campaign Innovation compared two GOP congressional nomination contests that year — one that used ranked choice and one that didn’t. Both the nominee and the runners-up in a ranked-choice contest had a more favorable image among voters, and voters perceived the campaign as being less negative.
Alaska has been the most high-profile example of this “RCV-electing-moderates” dynamic. Counter to conventional wisdom, while it is heavily conservative Alaska is not a heavy Republican state. 60% of voters are registered as "Non-Partisan," "Undeclared" or Alaskan Independence Party and only 25% are Republicans; that’s about the same percentage of registered GOP voters as in heavily blue California.
While most of those independent voters are conservative, nevertheless that composition gave Sarah Palin fits when she ran for Alaska’s sole US House seat. Those no-nonsense, self-reliant independent conservatives didn’t care much for their former failed governor who resigned amid ethics allegations halfway through her term to gallivant in the Lower 48 to be a Fox News celebrity. Palin has a 60 percent disapproval rating in Alaska, and many voters used the ranked ballots to express their disaffection. She lost to an Alaska Native and moderate Democrat, Mary Peltola, even though Democrats had not won that seat in nearly 50 years.
An even more compelling case for the ability of RCV to empower independent voters and deter MAGA extremists from winning was evident in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race. It was widely predicted that the more moderate incumbent, Lisa Murkowski, would lose in a closed GOP primary to the Trump-anointed firebrand Kelly Tshibaka. But in the Top Four-RCV election Murkowski, who campaigned on her ability to work across party lines, initially came in first place with 45 percent of first rankings on the strength of her support among all those independent conservative voters. She won with nearly 54 percent, benefiting from the second rankings from the voters who ranked a Democrat as their first choice.
Less reported but just as intriguing, given America’s bitter partisan polarization, many Alaska moderates and independents credit both the state's open primaries and ranked choice voting for fostering a bipartisan governing coalition in the state legislature, surprisingly composed of both moderate Republicans and Democrats.
Utah lights a small beacon
Strongly conservative Utah has some similarities to Alaska and Idaho. The Beehive State is a place where Republicans outnumber Democrats by nearly 4 to 1 and “unaffiliated” voters make up 30% of those registered. GOP leaders there have actually paved the way for the introduction of ranked choice voting. Voters in twenty Utah cities used RCV for their nonpartisan local elections in 2021 as part of a municipal pilot program. A post-election analysis found that nearly nine out of 10 Utah voters ranked multiple candidates on their ballots, and 8 out of 10 said RCV was easy to use. Three out of five voters reported they were more likely to vote for their favorite candidate without worrying about wasting their vote on spoilers. Former Utah Republican Party Chair Stan Lockhart observed that “approximately 40 percent of all Utah voters used RCV in their municipal elections,” and most voters liked it.
RCV to the rescue?
Based on these kinds of results, some Republicans are viewing RCV as a possible saving grace for the GOP. One study found that in 2022, 64% of Republican candidates for US House who won their primary with less than 50% of the vote performed as or worse than expected in general elections. By comparison, the majority of Republicans who won at least 50% in the primary overperformed in their general elections.
Some GOP strategists are deeply concerned over what happened in US Senate primaries in 2022, especially in Arizona, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. Republican candidates spent tens of millions running negative ads – against each other! The “winners” in these contests earned around only about a third of the GOP primary vote. Their nonmajority-approved nominees then lost winnable races in each state, allowing Democrats to expand their bare majority in the Senate.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell blamed his party’s poor showing on “candidate quality” that resulted from GOP nominees who won with a minority of the vote. A report from the conservative think tank R Street confirms these new realizations within the GOP ranks, as more and more Republicans, from high profile political leaders to the rank-and-file, recognize that the toxic destructiveness of a Trump-led party has undermined the GOP’s unity and collective interests.
So it appears that a majority victory threshold would actually help the GOP nominate more electable candidates. GOP insider Saul Anuzis, former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party and former member of the Republican National Committee, says “If Republican state parties chose to use ranked-choice voting as an option for nominating candidates, they could guarantee that our party would choose the strongest consensus candidate, as well as encourage a deep and broad field of candidates in the race.”
More moderate-conservatives seem to be viewing the inclusion of independent voters in open primaries, along with RCV’s majority requirement, as part of their lifeline to stop the right-wing extremists. This reform combo could naturally weed out fringe QAnon and Handmaid’s Tale radicals because they can’t win enough second- or third-choice votes from independent and moderate voters.
Use RCV in the GOP presidential primaries?
Now a number of GOP leaders are urging their party to adopt RCV for use in its upcoming presidential primaries. With 13 Republican candidates currently running, such a split field will no doubt be wrecked by numerous spoiler candidates, allowing a winner to potentially emerge who has a small minority of the vote. Everyone knows who that candidate is likely to be – Darth Donald. In fact, that’s how Trump managed to win the nomination in 2016, by conquering a vastly split field of 17 candidates. 2024 is shaping up to be 2016 redux.
So a number of Republican leaders as well as rank-and-file conservatives are coming to the conclusion that the GOP would have a better chance of picking the strongest consensus candidate and beating Joe Biden if it selected its nominee using ranked-choice voting. A recent Citizen Data poll shows that Republican voters are on board — 61% of Republicans are interested in ranking candidates in such a crowded presidential field.
And as Trump’s legal woes mount, there is growing evidence that using RCV could potentially make a difference. A recent presidential poll of South Carolina voters using RCV found that former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is the consensus lead candidate there, surpassing Donald Trump. This may be a sign that the GOP electorate in staunchly conservative South Carolina is starting to drift away from Trump, even as more Republican voters from other states are expressing a new willingness to vote for someone else.
The Empire strikes back – MAGA Republicans trying to ban RCV everywhere they can
The MAGA extremists and Trump loyalists have certainly noticed these impacts of RCV, and they are not taking it lying down. They have come to view RCV as a threat to their ability to dominate in low-turnout GOP primaries and to retain control of the party.
Following the Nov 2022 victory of moderate Democrat Mary Peltola over Sarah Palin, the MAGA chattering class went ballistic. Donald Trump called it “ranked choice crap voting…It’s a total rigged deal. Just like a lot of other things in this country.” Right-wing GOP Senator Tom Cotton tweeted "Ranked-choice voting is a scam to rig elections…which disenfranchises voters." Palin herself issued a statement decrying “this new crazy, convoluted, confusing ranked-choice voting system,” and is now leading an effort to repeal RCV in Alaska.
Early in 2023, the MAGA revenge machine kicked into high gear, and within a few months efforts were underway to ban RCV in any states controlled by a GOP trifecta. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis led the effort to ban RCV in his state, and Tennessee, South Dakota, Montana and Idaho have followed suit. A similar ban proposal was passed by the Republican legislature in Arizona, a state in which independent voters outnumber both Republicans and Democrats, but it was vetoed by the Democratic governor. North Dakota’s GOP legislature also passed a ban but it was vetoed by the Republican governor. In Texas, ban legislation failed to pass the legislature.
In January 2023, the Republican National Committee, the governing body for the national GOP that is dominated by a MAGA-fueled fringe element, passed a resolution to oppose RCV “in every locality and level of government” across the country. Some of the standard anti-RCV MAGA soundbites include the usual canards, such as it “requires centralized voting” (even as right-wing activists try to bully election administrators to get rid of voting equipment and go to all hand counts), and that it is supported by – of course – George Soros.
But nowhere is the Darth Trump Empire striking back more than in Idaho. As they try to counter this move by moderate Republicans to launch a voter initiative for a Top Four primary/RCV combo, the MAGAs are pulling out the stops.
“Idaho is under attack,” Idaho GOP Chair Dorothy Moon has proclaimed. An influential Idaho Republican donor has warned, “If you want to keep Idaho red, and not turn it pink and then purple and then blue, we need to stop this.”
The Idaho MAGA leaders talk about the ballot measure proposal in downright apocalyptic terms. They and other right-wing leaders across the country see this as an existential battle over control of the GOP. It’s about changing the type of Republican who gets elected.
And at the heart of it is the electoral system. That’s because the Trump extremists benefit from a broken system in which they can prevail in low-turnout primaries with a minority of the vote. But if the playing field is made level with RCV and a Top Four primary, independent voters will be able to participate in nominating Republican candidates, and those candidates would be required to earn the support of a popular majority.
In short, the RCV-Top Four combo could well put the MAGA Republicans out of business. So it’s no surprise that, from coast to coast, a battle is brewing within the Republican Party, and building to a showdown for the heart, soul and minds of its voters in 2024 and beyond.
Steven Hill @StevenHill1776