Forward to Reform: The Case for Overhauling the Mechanisms of Elections

In the 2020 Democratic Presidential primary Andrew Yang had a moment. He was a fresh face to the Democratic party with a background in business instead of politics, and he differentiated himself by strongly advocating for universal basic income. He eventually dropped out of the presidential primary and a year later he tried to capitalize on his political momentum by running for Mayor of New York. Again, he did not make it out of the primary. Fast forward another year and Yang is back in the headlines, this time announcing that he is launching a new third party, the Forward Party.

When explaining his reasoning for starting a third-party, Yang loves to throw around data; the percentage of Americans that identify as independents, and the number of Americans that want a third-party, and the number of Americans that want their elected leaders to compromise. The problem is, Yang’s understanding and analysis seems to begin and end here. He is right, to some extent, about the polling; and I will dig into that more a bit later. But a major third-party does not exist in America for of a lack of third-parties. There is no reason to believe that Yang’s Forward Party will fare any differently than any of the other 80+ third-parties in the country. The problem is structural and without addressing the structural issues a legitimate third-party will be dead on arrival. However, it is much easier to create a party to make it appear as though you are solving a problem than it is to actually reform a system. This is particularly true when to reform the system you need those with power in the system to change the system that they derive their power from.

The thing is, I do not disagree with Yang’s assessment, though I think either ignores or omits key information to fit his narrative, and where we diverge is in his proposed solution. So, lets start to break his argument down.

To start us off, lets look at some polling from Gallup on party identification. It is true that most Americans identify as independents, and that has been the case since 2009 according to Gallup’s polling. However, as I will examine more later, most Americans are casting their ballots for either of the two major parties.
 

While Americans that identify as independents is a plurality, this may be a bit misleading. First, I guess it needs to be stated, while there is an Independent Party that is not what this poll is identifying. This poll is identifying “independents”, as in those Americans that do not identify as either a Democrat or a Repbulican. In the 2020 election there were more than 80 named third-parties included on ballots across the country. Some, like the Libertarian and Green parties, will have more support than others, but spread that 41% across those 80+ parties and Democrats or Republicans are going to have the plurality.

Second, Michigan State University political scientist Corwin Smidt found in his paper, Polarization and the Decline of the American Floating Voter, that between 2000 and 2004 voters who identified as independents voted more consistently for a single party than those who identified as strong partisans from 1972 to 1976. This, Smidt argues, is due to parties that are more ideologically sorted now than they were fifty years ago, which means that voters could not use party identification as a heuristic when casting their ballots in the same way they can today. In turn, this has resulted in increased partisanship and voter calcification. That explains the voting behavior, but not the self-identification. That likely has to do with the general dissatisfaction with the two major parties and Congress, as we will examine later. 

So, despite the lack of a clear conclusion that can be drawn from Americans’ self-identification as independents, we did have two other data points to look at that might offer some clarity. If we again turn to Gallup polling, we will see that a clear majority of Americans favor the introduction of a major third-party.

Despite this expressed preference, Americans continue to elect Democrats and Republicans. As discussed above, this is due to increasing partisanship—which extends to independent voters as well—and voter calcification as voters become less likely to switch their votes between the parties, and negative partisanship as each side increasingly sees the other as an existential threat. This is not to say that the respondents to the poll lied, or the poll was fundamentally flawed. The dissatisfaction with the two parties is real and is reinforced by congressional approval ratings that remain in the 20% - 30% range, but something is preventing Americans from acting on their preference for a third-party alternative. Before we get into those factors lets look at the last data point as I think it is essential to understand the forces at work in our current system.

Lastly, turning again to Gallup, a majority of Americans believe that it is more important for leaders in Washington to compromise than it is to stick to their beliefs.
 

However, these results are immediately recontextualized if we take this analysis just one step further. Turning to Pew, they too find that a majority of Americans want elected officials who will compromise with the other party. The important difference in the the Pew survey is they followed the initial question by asking partisans if elected officials of their party should compromise with the opposition party. Support for compromise in this context fell precipitously.

Partisanship, particularly negative partisanship, is the likely culprit for this seeming hypocrisy. But I would argue that this desire for the opposition to compromise is the manifestation of a symptom—i.e. negative partisanship—not the underlying ailment. Negative partisanship is the result of a zero-sum system we have created where you either win an election or you lose an election. Those in the minority have found ways to frustrate the majority to prevent them from fully enacting their policy agenda; but for the most part if you win then you get to govern and if you lose, well, win the next one. And this is where the problem lies. Our election system incentivizes two parties because (1) you can win with only a plurality of the vote, (2) if you do not win an election, you do not have a part in governing, and (3) structures within our electoral and legislative systems incentivize the party in the minority to be nothing more than an opposition party.  

I think it is worth lingering on this last point for a while longer. We should assume that parties are rational actors within a system and the parties have two primary objectives within that system; to win elections and to wield power. When making their electoral case, parties can either make an affirmative case for themselves or a negative case for their opponents. Assuming majority control is realistically realizable for the minority party, they are going to behave in a way to maximize their electoral performance. The minority party understands that the majority party will get credit for legislative accomplishments, whether those accomplishments are bipartisan or not. However, the minority party understands the inverse is true too; the majority party will also get the blame for partisan gridlock. While a minority party may not be able to easily make an affirmative case for themselves, they are able to take away the majority party's ability to make their affirmative case. In the process, the minority party is making a negative case against the majority party—"what have they done to fix the problems of the nation when they held the majority?" 

This is the argument Frances Lee makes in her book, Insecure Majorities, though she takes it a step further. Lee compiled the share of the national two-party presidential votes, share of House seats, and share of Senate seats of each party in the chart below. It shows that the relatively small and short-lived majorities in the period since 1980 is relatively unique in the post-Civil War era. As stated above, the parties have two primary objectives. But as Lee illustrates in the chart below, there were extended periods where achieving the first objective of winning a governing majority was out of reach for the minority. That left wielding power as the only achievable objective, and the only way to exercise what little power the minority party did have was to compromise and work with the majority party. 

We are able to see the effect Lee is describing if we look at the number of Senate cloture votes from 1917, when the cloture rule was introduced, to 2020. A cloture vote is the three-fifths majority needed to end a filibuster, and so is used as a proxy for a filibuster since there is not data collected on when a filibuster is initiated. If we overlay the chart below, from Tim Ryan Williams at Vox, we can see that the number of cloture votes begins to rise roughly around the period of insecure majorities that Lee identified begins. 

There is a thread through these three data sets that Smidt and Lee can help us follow. As Smidt argues, in the second half of the twentieth century parties realigned themselves, sorting along ideological lines. This resulted in more polarized parties, and allowed voters that were likely always ideological partisans to more easily and consistently identify the candidate that they align with. Shortly after, the Democratic majority that had held throughout most of the century broke down, but instead of being replaced by a large and enduring Republican majority, the majorities were small and shifting. Lee posits that as long as majority control was attainable within an election cycle or two the party was incentivized not to compromised in order to win the next election. This created a feedback loop where increasing partisanship lead to decreasing compromise which fed frustration with the opposing party among voters, which led to increasing partisanship. While this loop continued to spiral, voters became increasingly disillusioned with Congress and the two major parties. So, voters increasingly identified as independents, and say they want compromise and a third-party option. 

To this point I have just stated that our system does not benefit third-parties, despite the polling that would suggest it otherwise should. We can look at the current composition of the Congress to see the practical, real-world results of our current political system. Currently there are three independent members in the US Senate; Angus King from Maine, Bernie Sanders from Vermont, and Kirsten Sinema from Arizona—only Senators King and Sanders were elected as independents, Sinema left the Democratic Party at the end of 2022. On the other side of the Capitol there are no independent members of the House of Representatives. Most recently, Justin Amash, Representative from Michigan, was elected as a Republican but left the party in 2020 to join the Libertarian party. He did not seek reelection. We should be seeing a trend here—though a very small sample size, which is indicative of the systemic advantage to the two parties in itself, half of the independent representatives to serve in Congress since 2016 were elected as members of one of the two major parties and not as independents.

We can look at the highest office in the nation as well. Since the Civil War the Presidency has been held by either a Democrat or a Republican. Even in 1912, when former President Theodor Roosevelt ran as a Progressive after not receiving the Republican nomination, the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, won the Presidency. In that election, Roosevelt was only able to garner 28% of the vote. This is impressive considering that he received more votes than the incumbent Presidential candidate William Howard Taft. 

It is the case that Taft and Roosevelt split the Republican base, and had one not been in the race the other would have likely defeated Wilson. This highlights one of the arguments against third-party candidates, they are viewed as spoilers to one of the two major candidates—because it’s a zero-sum contest. Ross Perot in 1992 spoiled George H. W. Bush’s reelection; Ralph Nader spoiled Al Gore’s election in 2000; Jill Stein spoiled Hillary Clinton’s election in 2016; and Gary Johnson spoiled Donald Trump’s popular vote victory in 2016.

There is another way to look at Teddy’s Progressive presidential campaign though; whether it had an effect beyond his own election. The 62nd Congress (1911-1913), had one Progressive member of Congress. After the 1912 election the number of Progressives in Congress waxed to 10 members. This was the high-water mark for Progressives however, within three election cycles there would be none remaining. This is, again, an impressive legacy of a third-party candidacy for President, though it was short lived. But that is kind of the point here. Either the Progressive party was going to flair up and perform well in an election cycle or two before fading away again, or it would have grown and eventually supplanted one of the two major parties, likely the Republican party.

With Teddy’s third-party candidacy as a standard lets look again at those modern examples of spoilers. Ross Perot, running as an Independent in 1992, won 19% of the popular vote. Not quite Teddy’s 28%, but still a significant portion of the electorate, and well above any other third-party candidate since. Perot ran again in 1996, this time running as a candidate of the Reform Party. He was unable to build on his momentum from the 1992 election and only received 8% of the popular vote. In 2000, Ralph Nader, running as the Green Party candidate, received 3% of the popular vote. And in 2016 Gary Johnson, running as the Libertarian Party candidate, and Jill Stein, running as the Green Party candidate, received 3% and 1% of the popular vote, respectively. As one might be able to infer from the discussion of independents currently in Congress, none of these third-party candidacies were able to produce broader electoral gains for their parties.

What, then, is the solution here if not to try and create a major third-party? As I have argued throughout, because our system is zero-sum there is not room for a major third-party. That is not to say that the Democratic and Republican parties are interminable or immutable; throughout our history we have had parties rise and fall—the Federalists, the Democratic-Republicans, the Whigs—but one party was always supplanted by another. Furthermore, there has never truly been a period of multi-polar governance in this country; the Presidency has always been held by one of two major parties and though there have been more third parties in Congress at various points, they never wielded significant power and eventually faded away. See Figure 1 below for additional detail.

The solution is to remove the mechanisms that are currently in place in our electoral system that creates a zero-sum contest. Some argue that the Electoral College should be removed in favor the more direct popular vote; but this only addresses Presidential elections and still allows candidates to win with only a plurality, not a majority of the electorate. A more comprehensive set of solutions is needed to address all elections—whether that is the adoption of ranked choice voting or a proportional system. These alternate mechanisms for electing governing officials allows voters to cast ballots for third-party candidates with less worry that they will be “spoiling” the election for their preferred candidate of the major parties or throwing their vote away on a candidate that does not have a chance of winning. This would allow Americans to act on their expressed preference for a major third-party and for them to be able to vote in a way that aligns with their ideological identification—i.e. independent.

Further, if truly multi-polar governance was achieved elected officials would be able to compromise with members from parties outside of their own party without having to negotiate with someone that holds diametrically different views, as is the case in the current system. This would functionally make Pew’s survey cited above moot as elected officials could compromise to achieve policy goals without undermining their beliefs. However, if multi-polar governance was achieved further reforms would be needed to facilitate effective governance—thinking specifically about the filibuster in the Senate and the 60-vote threshold to functionally pass any legislation.

I recognize that this sort of reform is not likely to be enacted since reform would have to come from the very people benefiting from the current systems. This is the conversation we should be having though, not whether a new third-party with substantial resources is going to upset the status quo. It very well may be a disrupter in the political system, but if history is any indicator this new third party will either fade away in a few election cycles or take the place of one of the two major parties. Either way, in the long-term, equilibrium returns to a two-party system. 

The Rational for a Proportional System

At this point I have written more than once in favor of adopting a proportional electoral system over our current first-past-the-post (or winner-take-all) system, and even over a ranked choice electoral system. So, I thought it might be a good idea to quickly articulate why my preferences are what they are. To be clear, I do not disfavor a ranked choice system. In fact, I think it is necessary in certain cases when there is not anything to apportion—say in US Senate or Governor elections. And if I had the power to implement a new system of elections in this country with the snap of my fingers, but the only choice was between a ranked choice system and maintaining the status quo, I most definitely would choose the ranked choice system.

Although both a proportional and a ranked choice system are different means to achieve most of the same objectives—increasing ideological representation, increasing voter engagement, and breaking the two-party power structure—ranked choice retains some of the structural advantages for the two parties that exists in our current system. Namely, the two parties have a presence in every state to be competitive in most elections up and down the ballot. This includes donor lists, volunteers, a bench of candidates, relationships with pollsters and advertising agencies, party employees, and anything else needed to run a campaign. This will not necessarily be true of every other party as they may have difficulty even fielding a candidate in every race. The second benefit that the major parties have is name recognition. Voters may know the Libertarian and Green parties, but how many other third-parties can they name? In the 2020 election there were about 90 named third-parties included on ballots across the country. Even if voters recognize the party name, would they know the party's platform? So, even if their primary preference was for a third-party what would voters’ choose as their second choice? Likely the more recognizable candidate/party, which would probably be a Republican or Democrat.

Source: FEDERAL ELECTIONS 2020: Election Results for the U.S. President, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, Federal Election Commission, Washington, D.C., October 2022

Now you might rightfully point out that most of the structural advantages I just outlined would still be present in a proportional system. However, the last point is where I think these two systems pull apart and a proportional system benefits third parties more. While I can take election results and distribute seats proportionally based on those results, it is more difficult to game-out ranked choice results (and to be fair, I made it easy on myself when apportioning seats by throwing all third-party votes into one bucket which overstates the actual results of any one third-party). This is difficult because while I could make some assumptions about who a voter’s second and third choice may be, voters are idiosyncratic and those assumptions may very well be wrong. Furthermore, when you change the election rules and incentives, voters will change their voting behavior accordingly. To take this one step further, if I were to retroactively apply a ranked choice system to all elections where a majority was not obtained, making assumptions along the way, the results likely would not drastically differ as the two major parties will have a substantial lead—in part because voters were not casting their ballots with a ranked choice system in mind.

With that said, I think we can intuitively work this out. Let’s set up a fairly simple example; there is a state with four districts. The state is roughly split between conservatives and liberals and districts are drawn fairly. After the election is held the vote tally is as follows: 

Under our current system two Republicans and two Democrats are elected to the House of Representatives.

But, as I said earlier, if you change the rules of the election, voters will change their behavior. Let's now assume this same state adopted a ranked choice electoral system. With no third party infrastructures in the first or third districts and no candidate pool to pull from, those two districts remain a race between the Republican and Democrat. So, looking at districts 2 and 4 only, the results of the election are:

After the first round no one has an out right majority, and the third-parties did better—15 points better. But they are still last, so when this goes to the next round and the Libertarian votes in District 2 are distributed to their second choice, the Republican, and the Green votes in District 4 are distributed to their second choice, the Democrat, the outcome of the election will be the same. This state will have two Democratic Representatives and two Republican representatives.

This is a simplistic model for illustrative purposes, but we can see how this has played out in reality. Maine adopted a ranked choice electoral system in 2018. Since then it has held two elections for the US Senate and six for US House (three election years for two House seats); electing an Independent and a Republican to the Senate, and two Democratic Representatives each year. In fact, only once in those eight elections has a ballot gone to the second round—on the first ballot for district 2 in 2018 no candidate had a majority and so an instant runoff was held between the Republican and Democratic candidates who had received the most votes. It should also be noted that Angus King is the Independent Senator who was elected in 2018. However, he was an incumbent who previously had identified as an Independent and was caucusing with the Democrats. As such, I do not think we can credit his electoral victory in 2018 to the ranked choice system. In 2022 Alaska joined Maine in adopting a ranked choice system. In that election Alaska sent a Democrat to the House of Representatives and a Republican to the Senate.

Let’s return one more time to our hypothetical state. This time the state has gotten rid of its districts in favor of one, multi-member district with seats distributed proportionately by party to the percentage of votes won. This time the results are as follows:

Based on these proportions, Democrats are awarded two seats and Republicans and Libertarians are awarded one each. Under the other two systems third-parties may have had support in all districts but may not have been able to field a candidate to run in every district. Further, a third-party may have broad support in a state, support enough to win a seat under a proportional system, but not enough in any one district to win a majority.

We should also take a minute to consider what the implications of this are for voters. Voters in Districts 1 and 3 that might support a third-party candidate are forced to either decide between voting for a candidate for one of the parties running or not to vote at all. These voters rightly feel under-represented because they are presented with a false dilemma. The only reason this is any dilemma at all is because our winner-take-all system forces us into the false choice between two ideologies; conservatism as represented by the Republican party and liberalism as represented by the Democratic party. The American electorate is much more diverse than this dichotomy.

The outcome between our second hypothetical and our last hypothetical illustrates how, I believe, a proportional system is more potent in enabling third-parties to gain representation within our government. I should point out, in fairness, that in Maine the third-party candidates did not gain enough votes (even when combined) to win a seat under a proportional system, suggesting an optimism in my final hypothetical. Though, to repeat my refrain, voter behavior may change to a sufficient degree for a third-party to win representation if Maine were to adopt a proportional system instead of a ranked choice system. 

When we are considering electoral systems we should not think of them as isolated systems in their individual silos. More voters turn out to vote in Presidential election years, but those additional voters are not only voting for the President, they also cast their vote in Senate and House elections, and on down the ballot. Turnout is generally higher. It stands to reason then, that if we were able to increase voter turnout for one branch of government due to increased representation resulting from a more responsive electoral system, then turnout overall would increase.

As I stated earlier, I believe a ranked choice system is better than our current system. Given time, I may be proven wrong by the electoral results from Maine and Alaska as parties, candidates, and voters adapt to the new system. I hope I am wrong. I hope we begin to see more diverse representation from these states, and as a result increased voter turnout.

It is for the very reason that individual elections affect one another that my ideal would be to adopt a proportional system for state general assemblies and the House of Representatives, and a ranked choice system for Governors and the US Senate. I believe these systems would reinforce one another.

Proportional systems would give third-parties a better shot at gaining representation within the government. By merely winning an election third-parties would gain a credibility with voters that they have struggled to gain in the past. Winning an election would also increase the profile of third-parties so the party and its platform are more familiar to voters and voters would actually be able to see how the party's ideas translate into practical governance. 

When it comes time to cast a ranked choice ballot voters are more familiar with third-parties, their candidates, and their platform. Voters also view certain third-parties as more credible after the party has won representation for itself in an election and voters can see how the party operates in the government. Perhaps, then, after the ballots are counted, third-parties have a larger share of votes in the first round and are not the first party eliminated from the ballots. Maybe third-parties are also voters second and third choices above Republicans and Democrats. And so, maybe third-parties win more ranked choice elections.

What I am describing is a virtuous cycle. As third-parties win more elections they become more credible and known. As those parties become more credible and known they win more elections. The more elections that third-parties win the more ideologies and perspectives are represented. As more ideologies and perspectives are represented within the government citizens begin to see themselves better represented in their government and observe more responsive elections. As this perception increases more citizens begin to participate and voter turnout increases. With increased voter turnout, support for third-parties increases, and so on.

But to kick off this cycle something is needed to breakthrough the two parties hold on power. I do not think a ranked choice system is strong enough to do this. Although I believe a proportional system would be able to do this, it has limited applications—you cannot apportion votes for a single Senate seat or Governorship. And while I think a proportional system would still have an effect on these elections, the effect would inherently be limited because the candidate with the plurality of votes would win the election, reinforcing the two party system. Both are needed if we truly want to change our system for the better. 

Ranking the Senate: A Race to the Majority

In an earlier post, A Proportional Response, I discuss some of the issues affecting our electoral process. However, in that post I focused on the Electoral College and elections of Representatives, avoiding addressing the Senate at the time. The focus then was the adoption of a proportional system, which could not be overlaid Senate elections. With only two Senators from each state, and only one Senator elected to a seat in each election cycle, there is no opportunity for apportioning votes. However, as I think many of those same issues apply to the Senate, that is where I would like to now turn my attention. 

Even before that original post there was discussion on the adoption of ranked choice voting in our elections. Since Alaska has joined Maine as the second state to conduct their elections using a ranked choice model when Alaskans voted in favor of a ballot initiative on Tuesday, November 3, 2020. The concept behind ranked choice voting is fairly simple. The candidate with the broadest popular appeal is elected to office by passing the 50% vote threshold after voters’ candidate rankings are allocated and reallocated. The hope being that this would increase party representation and decrease partisanship.

First, it may be helpful to take a step back and more fully explain how ranked choice voting works. When a voter enters the polling booth to cast their ballot for their Senator, they will be presented with the candidates running for that Senate seat, as expected. Hypothetically, a voter may see a member of the Republican, Democratic, Green, and Libertarian parties on their ballot. However, instead of selecting a single candidate to cast their ballot for, the voter ranks all candidates from their most desired to least desired. For example:

(1) Green

(2) Democrat

(3) Libertarian

(4) Republican

 

As the votes are tabulated, under a ranked choice system, it is no longer the candidate with the most votes who wins (a plurality), but the first candidate to receive more than 50% of the vote (a majority). This is achieved by dropping the candidate who has received the fewest number of votes, and reallocating those votes to the other candidates. For any voters who had this candidate ranked first, their votes will be reallocated to their second choice. In the example provided above, if the Green party received the fewest votes, then this voter’s ballot would be cast for the Democrat candidate. This continues until a candidate is allocated more than 50% of the votes.

It is through this reallocation process that a ranked choice system will result in the candidate with the broadest popular appeal winning office. It is very likely that the candidate will not be everyone’s first choice, but it will at least be a majority of people’s second or third choices. It also means that voters continue to have a say in who is elected instead of being shut out of the process if their preferred candidate does not win outright, as in our standard electoral process.

Also, by being able to rank candidates, the incentives for strategic voting are reduced. By this I mean; under our current system of voting we get to cast one ballot for one candidate and the candidate with the most votes win. This framing forces voters to weigh whether they would rather vote for their preferred candidate and risk seeing the candidate they have the most disagreements with win, or vote for a candidate they mostly align with that has a better chance of winning. Said another way, voters are asked to consider whether they would rather vote for a candidate or against one.

Under a ranked choice model, third-party candidates would no longer be seen as spoilers to one of the two major parties; a characterization used by the two major parties to disparage third-parties, and their candidates, and dissuade voters from casting their ballots for a third-party candidate. The result being, voting for a third-party candidate would no longer be seen by voters as a protest vote, or worse, a throw-away vote. As I have mentioned before, raising the profile of third-parties increases ideological representation within our government. By increasing ideological representation, voters will feel like they have someone in government who has their interests in mind. It seems intuitive that increasing ideological responsiveness would increase voter engagement.

Lastly, candidates will need to adjust their campaign strategies; campaigning to not only be voters first choice, but their second and third choices as well, shifting away from base activation and toward appealing to a broader coalition of voters. Unless a candidate is able to win outright based on voters’ first preference, the only path to victory is through also being a second or third choice. The hope is that due to the change in incentives, campaigns would be more civil, and that civility would ideally carry over to governing. Examples of this have been seen in Maine where candidates running against one another have appeared in the same campaign ads.

It is worth pointing out that a few states currently have instant runoff elections—Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi—meaning that if no single candidate passes the 50% threshold another election is held between the two leading candidates. One might think that this would have the same intended effects as a ranked choice voter model, however, that does not seem to be the case. This does address the concern that voters of a losing candidate lose their ability to have a say in who the winner should be. However, because a separate, special election is held voter turnout is usually substantially lower than the general election—23% lower on average, as shown in Figure A, below.

Figure A:

	Change in Turnout	Percent of GE Turnout
2002 LA	-1%		99%
2008 GA	-43%		57%
2014 LA	-13%		87%
2016 LA	-54%		46%
2018 MS	-4%		96%
AVERAGE	-23%		77%

 

Further, as we saw in the 2020 Senate election in Georgia between Doug Collins (R), Kelly Loeffler (R), and Ralph Warnock (D) the potential for an instant runoff election was not a sufficient incentive for candidates to not run a negative campaign nor run a base activation campaign. Collins and Loeffler, both Republicans, ran incendiary campaigns against one another, trying to run to the right of the other. These are members of the same party running attack ads against one another. As a result, this Senate campaign is headed to a runoff between Loeffler and Warnock.

So, it would seem that instant runoff elections do not produce the intended benefits of a ranked choice election method.

With the understanding of a ranked choice model and the intended benefits we should now look at the arguments against the current Senate election model. Looking at Figure B, which details the percentage of the total popular vote by party and seats won by party from the 2000 election through the 2018 election, we are able to see a few things. First, Democrats in 2000 and Republicans in 2010 won a majority of Senate seats despite not winning a majority of votes. Second, on two different occasions, 2004 and 2016, Democrats won the popular share of the vote but lost in the share of seats.

Figure B:

	Total Popular Vote Percent of Popular Vote				Total Seats Percent of Seats
	Dem	Rep	Other		Dem	Rep	Other
2000	36,788,222	36,729,792	5,797,467		18	14	1
	46.38%	46.13%	7.31%		54.55%	42.42%	3.03%
2002	20,470,371	22,198,747	1,606,029		12	22	0
	46.23%	50.14%	3.63%		35.29%	64.71%	0.00%
2004	43,605,968	39,920,857	2,678,558		14	20	0
	50.58%	46.31%	3.11%		41.18%	58.82%	0.00%
2006	33,623,140	26,498,040	2,837,821		23	9	1
	53.40%	42.09%	4.51%		69.70%	27.27%	3.03%
2008	35,473,711	30,913,256	3,485,123		20	14	1
	50.77%	44.24%	4.99%		57.14%	40.00%	2.86%
2010	33,225,487	35,958,608	5,481,075		13	25	0
	44.50%	48.16%	7.34%		34.21%	65.79%	0.00%
2012	49,998,769	39,131,016	3,930,193		23	8	2
	53.73%	42.05%	4.22%		69.70%	24.24%	6.06%
2014	20,865,858	24,613,889	2,013,372		12	24	0
	43.93%	51.83%	4.24%		33.33%	66.67%	0.00%
2016	51,653,808	41,324,322	4,283,315		12	22	0
	53.11%	42.49%	4.40%		35.29%	64.71%	0.00%
2018	46,712,691	39,333,695	4,426,836		22	11	2
	51.63%	43.48%	4.89%		62.86%	31.43%	5.71%

 

Practically this translates to is Republicans having a two-seat majority in the Senate in 2016 despite winning 17.45 million fewer votes in Senate elections from 2012 to 2016 and a three-seat majority in 2018 though winning 13.96 million fewer votes. This Senate also confirmed three Supreme Court Justices nominated by a President who won 2.8 million fewer votes than his opponent.

Some observers have seen these outcomes of our elections and argued that this is undemocratic. Others have gone farther to argue that this is a dangerous pattern. A party that is not only able to win without needing to appeal or respond to a majority of the public, but actively seeks a minoritarian path to victory will seek to protect that path to power; namely through voter restrictions like ballot ID laws, purges of the voter rolls, closing polling locations, restricting absentee and early voting options, and gerrymandering districts, to name a few.

I do not necessarily disagree with this assessment, in fact it’s one of the reasons I advocate for a proportional system for electing the President and Representatives. Certainly, when taking the Electoral College, gerrymandering of House Districts, and malapportionment of the Senate together I think the argument is quite strong. However, if we look at the Senate in isolation, I think the argument weakens a bit. Looking at Senate election results in the aggregate, as we did above, could be a bit misleading. Senators are elected by the voters in individual states, not in nation wide elections. It’s for this reason I think the argument that Senators are not responsive to a majority of voters could be disingenuous.

So instead, if we look at Senate races from 2000 through 2018, we can see how responsive to voters Senators truly needed to be. Looking to Figure C, below we can see that on average over the 10 election cycles from 2000 to 2018 3 elections per cycle, or 10%, are won by Senators who win fewer than 50% of the vote.

Figure C:

	Number Races	Winners <50%	Percent of Races <50%
2000	33	3	9%
2002	34	3	9%
2004	34	2	6%
2006	33	4	12%
2008	35	3	9%
2010	37	4	13%
2012	33	3	9%
2014	36	4	11%
2016	34	6	18%
2018	35	2	6%

 

Of these 34 elections with candidates winning fewer than 50% of votes, the candidates are from 19 states. Alaska contributes the most elections with five candidates winning without a majority of the votes. As pointed out earlier Alaska has adopted a ranked choice model. After Alaska; Colorado (3), Minnesota (3), Missouri (3) would be the states which might most benefit from a ranked choice system.  

Though Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi have runoff elections I think it is reasonable to included them within the analysis of Figure C, for the reasons outlined above. If we do, then the average number of elections increases from 3 to 4 per cycle, or from 10% to 11%. Furthermore, Louisiana would join Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri as it has had three Senate runoff elections over the 10 Senate election cycles.

Now, it is worth considering that there is nothing systematic about Senate elections which would allow for Senators to win and hold their seats despite consistently failing to win with a majority of votes, as the Electoral College allows Presidential candidates to win without wining even the plurality of votes. Further, there is no strategic advantage that one party has over the other; Democrats and Republicans benefit from wining with only a plurality. In fact, it is a fairly even split between the two parties with Democrats winning 19 elections and Republicans winning 14 elections with fewer than 50% of the popular vote.

However, we should consider whether the current system is really producing the best results. As I argued in my earlier post, our system is currently structured in a way that incentivizes a two-party system, and this bipartisan structure forces a false choice which creates apathy within the voting population. Voter preferences are more complex than two parties are able to reflect, and if voters do not see themselves reflected in the available candidates (or available viable candidates) then they are less likely to vote. As shown in Figure D.1, below, turnout for Senate elections are already low when compared to Presidential election turnout, 68% on average. And, as discussed in A Proportional Response, Presidential election turnout in the US is not particularly high to begin with, with an average 15% of registered voters not voting in Presidential elections.

Figure D.1:

	Presidential Turnout	Senate Turnout
2000	105,405,100	79,315,481	75%
2004	122,295,345	86,205,383	70%
2008	131,313,820	69,872,090	53%
2012	129,085,410	93,059,978	72%
2016	136,669,276	97,261,445	71%
			68%

 

Figure D.2 shows that Senate voter turnout falls further during non-Presidential election years, decreasing on average by 25%. 

Figure D.2:

	Senate Turnout
2000	79,315,481
2002	44,275,147
2004	86,205,383
2006	62,959,001
2008	69,872,090
2010	74,665,170
2012	93,059,978
2014	47,493,119
2016	97,261,445
2018	90,473,222
Presidential Year Average	85,142,875
Off Cycle Average	63,973,132

 

It is easy to imagine how allowing voters the ability to express their preference without it being thought of as a protest vote and, what’s more, allowing them to continue to be involved in the process even after their preferred candidate has not won would increase voter engagement in the process and confidence in the system. If voter engagement is truly activated and more voters do turn out and they vote their true preference they we would also begin to see that diversity reflected in our elected officials as more parties begin to receive more traction.

Lastly, I would like to return to the concerns raised in response to Senate results not reflecting the majority of the electorate. Concerns over the malapportionment of the Senate are valid as the rural-urban divide between Republicans and Democrats continues to grow and as the Senate has a rural bias—Wyoming and California have the same representation within the Senate despite Wyoming having 1.5% of California’s population. I am not convinced that this is the problem, however. One of this country’s founding principles was “majority rules, minority rights” and the Senate seems instrumental to the preservation of minority rights. The issue, as I see it, is that our parties are straining our system in ways it was not designed to withstand. The system of checks and balances was designed to create competition between the branches of government, each protecting its own power. But in a two-party system, where ambitions of the party supersede ambitions of the institution, parties cooperate across branches and those checks and balances break down. Therefore, the solution would not seem to be correcting the apportionment of the Senate, but breaking our bipolar system to create a multipolar system. By disaggregating the power of the parties and increasing competition, it will be difficult to wield across institutions. Maybe then the ambitions of the institution will again supersede the ambitions of the party.