The U.S. primaries system, used to determine the presidential nominees for each party during election season, is broken.
This disfunction becomes most apparent when the electorate is both evenly split and highly polarized, which is the nation’s current political environment. This permits a large group of voters to select each party’s nominee, though a much smaller group actually impacts who will win the general election. Data from recent elections support such an observation.
Recall that, in 2016, Donald Trump won the Electoral College, while losing the popular vote. However, just three states ultimately led to his victory (Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania), with the difference across these three states totaling less than 110,000 votes. Other battleground states that contributed to such a close election included North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Minnesota and Florida.
In 2020, Joe Biden won both the Electoral College and the popular vote. Once again, three states ultimately led to his victory (Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin), with the difference across these three states totaling less than 44,000 votes. This would have led to a 269-269 tie, so a........