Democrats contested fewer primary elections than Republicans
Both parties failed to contest a majority of their partisan primary elections this year, including hundreds of congressional seats
Introduction
According to our latest analysis, Democrats failed to contest nearly 75% of their primary races compared to 60% uncontested in Republican primaries.
These numbers are based on our coverage of partisan primary races this spring and do not include our coverage of the thousands of nonpartisan primary races or the jungle primaries in California, both of which also saw a majority go uncontested.
This means that, in addition to there being a profound lack of contested races between Democrats and Republicans in general elections, there is also a significant lack of competition within each party during primaries. Both parties are failing to offer their voters choices in their nominating process for thousands of positions, including hundreds of congressional seats.
In the past, our research team has offered a look at the alarming trend of uncontested races during general elections, including analyses for the past 4 general election cycles (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023) showing that nearly 70% of positions on the ballot had only one or fewer candidates on the ballot.
Now we take a look at the same analysis for the 2024 primaries, offering some of the most surprising insights on the topic to date.
Breakdown of uncontested primaries in each party
Based on a sample of over 14,000 positions up for election in partisan primaries this spring, we found that both parties left thousands of races uncontested, with Republicans candidates contesting only 40% of their primaries and Democrats contesting only 26%.
The problem gets worse - at the top of ballot?
In our coverage of uncontested races during general elections, we find that the problem is mostly exclusive to down ballot races. In fact, according to our research, typically less than 2% of federal races go uncontested in general elections.
That’s not the case in partisan primaries. Hundreds of congressional seats had no primary opponents in the Democratic and Republican nominating process this spring, and the same is true for thousands of state legislative seats across the country.
These visuals don’t include hundreds more uncontested races at both the federal and state level in California’s jungle primaries which we will be previewing soon.
What is a partisan primary and why does this matter?
Just as voters in both parties host primary elections in each state to nominate their candidate for president ahead of the general election, the same process occurs for thousands of seats down the ballot including U.S. congressional, state legislature, city council, judicial, and many more.
This process allows candidates in the same party to debate over the vision of the party and argue their case as the best candidate to win in the general election. Without competitive primaries, these debates within each party do not take place.
The lack of competition in our primaries may also lend itself to the consistently lower turnout and engagement during partisan primaries, which is proven to have a downstream effect on turnout in the general.
This finding is especially troubling taken in tandem with our research on uncontested races in general elections. While many races in general elections are in safely Republican or Democrat districts and may not merit competition, this geographical rationale does not apply to these uncontested primaries.
If voters have no choice between Republican and Democrat, they should at least be given a choice to pick the party nominee in the first place.