California's Top-two Primary: A Successful Reform III
Abstract: This paper is the third of three, California's Top-two Primary: A Successful Reform I, II, and III, but it can be read independently.
Summary: The paper presents a table of all the candidates elected in a same-party general election in California from 2012 through 2016, and reports how often a candidate who had trailed in the primary won the general election. The paper examines whether voters who vote a general-election ballot and face, either in a statewide race or in a district race, two candidates of a party not their own, vote in that race or skip it; tallies the amount of money spent in same-party general elections, as a quantiable measure of their competitiveness and interest; examines whether the top-two primary, in creating some general election races from which one or other major party is excluded, has denied that excluded party a significant chance of electing one of their candidates; and compares the number of general election races in California, either resulting from the system of partisan primaries or from the top-two, that end with both a Democrat and a Republican on the ballot, to the number in the other states. The conclusions drawn from all three papers appear together at the end of this one.
