FairVote today released Government of the Few in the “Decided Dozen” — Frozen Representation and the Distorted Demographics of Decisive Primary Elections. Report authors Andrew Douglas and Zack Avre zero in on the “Decided Dozen”–12 states where control over the state legislature and the outcome of the great majority of general election races is never in doubt, leaving the only meaningful choices and power to voters in low turnout, unrepresentative primary contests.
This “Decided Dozen” consists of Georgia, Idaho, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York (State Assembly only], Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. Legislative elections in these states share three common elements: a change in majority party control would require enormous and unlikely shifts in voters’ partisan preferences; few individual districts are likely to be competitive; and candidates rarely find ways to win on their opponents’ turf. Furthermore, voters in the dominant parties’ primaries in these states – the only group to which majority legislators owe their power – are highly unrepresentative of their states’ voters more broadly. This is true not only of their partisan ideological views, but also for demographic measures like age and ethnicity.