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The topic of this episode is, “What do we know about primary elections?”
Last week America held congressional midterm elections. Some big stories emerged, and one of them involves primary elections, those elections-before-the-general election. Earlier this year, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas lost his primary—in great part due to President Donald Trump, a member of his own party, supporting a challenger, Ken Paxton. Well, Ken Paxton lost that seat to a Democrat, and the vote was not even close. This is a high salience example of a primary election weakening a party’s ability to compete.
But the Cornyn-Paxton situation is but one anecdote, and thankfully we have social science research we can draw upon to give us better insight into whether primaries are good for parties and good for governance.
To help us think through this topic, I have with me Richard C. Barton. He is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School. He studies how electoral systems, party dynamics, and legislative structures influence political behavior and policy outcomes. Most recently, he is the co-editor of the book, Reforming Primary Elections: Voters, Campaigns, and the Future of Congressional Politics (De Gruyter, 2026).
Read the full transcript of the episode here.
