Abstract

In late June 2016, the voters in New York’s 19th congressional district went to the polls to pick candidates to stand on the party lines for the general election. Since Rep. Chris Gibson (R-NY) was retiring, there were strong candidates in both the Democratic and Republican races seeking to run in a competitive district that Barack Obama won by six points in 2012. Nevertheless, there were only 17,007 voters on the Democratic side and 13,714 votes cast for the Republican candidates for an overall turnout of under 13 percent (Hamilton 2016). In contrast, statewide turnout in Georgia’s primary was just over 20 percent. ¹ One major difference between the two states that might explain the difference in turnout is who is allowed to vote in the primary elections. In New York, only registered party members are allowed to vote in party primaries. This is not true in Georgia where there is no party registration and voters may pick either ballot on primary day. Since many potential voters are excluded, it is not surprising that turnout was lower in the closed primary state compared to the open one. In this chapter, we provide a systematic test of the hypothesis that primary type will influence turnout rates in over 2,000 contested House primaries across nine election years from 2000 to 2016. In short, our results show us the New York–Georgia differences are not an anomaly and that closed primaries are associated with lower levels of voter turnout.