The Missing Middle?

Two weeks out from Election Day, many of the most closely watched and competitive statewide races are between a MAGA Republican and a Democrat. Here are few examples:

Arizona’s gubernatorial race between Kari Lake and Katie Hobbs

New Hampshire’s Senate race between Don Bolduc and Maggie Hassan.

Pennsylvania’s Senate race between Mehmet Oz and John Fetterman

In each of these races, if the MAGA Republican ends up winning, it will be seen as a victory for Donald Trump and the predominance of his MAGA movement within the current Republican Party.

But in each of these races, there was a non-MAGA candidate who fell just short of winning the Republican primary. In Arizona, Karen Taylor Robson lost to Kari Lake by only a few points (43% to 48%). New Hampshire’s GOP Senate primary was even closer, with the non-MAGA Chuck Morse a point behind Bolduc (36% to 37%). In Pennsylvania, David McCormick’s primary defeat against Oz was a proverbial photo finish that went to a recount (with the final margin being less than 0.1%).

Thus, if the MAGA candidate wins the general election, it’s reasonable to ask whether the non-MAGA Republican would have won the general election also. In fact, the non-MAGA Republican might have won the general election by an even wider margin than the more polarizing and divisive MAGA candidate. For example, I’ve heard many pundits predict that David McCormick would have had an easier time beating Fetterman than Oz does; and so if Oz wins, presumably McCormick would have as well but by a wider margin.

Thus, in each of these cases, it would be wrong to interpret a victory for the MAGA candidate as meaning that the general election voters subscribed to the MAGA movement. Instead, in each instance, the general election voters might have preferred the non-MAGA Republican more, but were deprived of that option by the way that the partisan primary limits who’s on the general election ballot.

When the dust settles on this year’s midterms, will we be in a position to evaluate whether the electoral system is structured to enable the general election voters to choose the candidate whom they most prefer?

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