Yesterday at the excellent Politics in the Extreme conference at Cal State Channel Islands, there was a great panel on the top two primary featuring a paper by Seth Masket (draft here) and comments by Timm Herdt and Joe Mathews. Seth’s paper is an excellent early look at what has changed and what has not as California shifted to top two, with the caveat that this is only the first general election under the new primary rules and it coincides with a new type of redistricting, the citizens redistricting commission.  But I was struck by the negativity and disappointment expressed by the commentators about how top two was not working out, at least so far, in shaking up the system and producing more moderate legislators.  Joe Mathews pithily if vulgarly described top two as a two round general election: the clusterf…. round folllowed by the blood bath round.

I’ve long supported the constitutionality of top two as adopted through the initiative process—political parties don’t have a right to a party nomination process to choose candidates for office.  But I’ve been more ambivalent on policy grounds as to whether top two is a good idea.  I’ll be watching to see how Seth and others evaluate the effects of top two on politics and elections going forward.