Voters have the power to end gridlock, but many decide not to use it.
To have the best democracy, we need all voters to register and cast ballots. This makes the democracy truly reflective of the people.
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Longtime observer of Oregon and west coast politics. Political analyst for various media outlets, professor at Pacific University.
Do our major political parties represent the people of Oregon? Are there opportunities to break the partisan logjam we find among our elected officials? What do the voters really want?
Reliable polling shows there are strong cross-partisan majorities supporting ideas in a variety of fields. Whether it is gun safety laws, quality healthcare, strong education systems, or fairness and equity for all inhabitants, the results are clear—the people want changes in our rules to meet some pretty clear goals.
But these goals are out of reach due to the partisan infighting in legislatures and Congress and among elected leaders in the executive branch.
Why does this keep happening?
There are a number of ways to approach this dilemma. Some focus on the salience of issues. While there are a lot of important concerns out there, we each prioritize our concerns in different ways. When candidates campaign on a set of issues, we may generally agree or disagree with them, but unless one of their issues matches one of our really important concerns, we don’t push for action once the election is over.
Others focus on the hijacking of political parties by activists. We have seen that with the Oregon Republican Party in the past few months. The party leaders gained international attention by talking about the January 6 insurrection as a false flag operation—they were replaced, mainly by legislators, at the next state central committee meeting.
Voting patterns can help sort out how representative Oregon’s parties are of the state’s electorate. Now I love a good poll, and I love to figure out the dynamics of organizations, but voting is the most authoritative way we have to figure out what voters want. And the message they send is often contradictory and conciliatory: voting against their affiliation (or lack thereof) and acquiescing to Democratic and Republican control over the state’s politics.
Oregon was a staunchly Republican state in both voter registration and elected officials for decades. By the mid-1950s the Democrats had caught up in voter registration. From the late 1950s on Democrats outnumbered Republicans in ever greater numbers (with some ups and downs over the decades).
This new reality among the voters took a while to have an effect on the party identity of those elected to office. The 1956 replacement election for governor saw the first Democratic win since 1938, but Republican Mark Hatfield retook the office in the 1958 election—Republicans would hold it for six of the next seven gubernatorial terms. The last two victories for Republicans, Vic Atiyeh in 1978 and 1982, were from an electorate that was 54% Democratic and 34.5% Republican in ’78 and 49.4% Democratic and 36.4% Republican in 1982.
The big change during that time? In 1958, “other” registered voters were 1.5% of the electorate. When Atiyeh won as the last Republican to hold the governorship, “other” was 11% in 1978 and 14.1% in 1982. That group is now 32.4% of the electorate (our six minor parties are currently 6.8% of the electorate).
Interestingly, the difference in party registration between Democrats and Republicans was much greater in the late 1970s and early 1980s than it is today—from 19.5% in 1978 to 13% in 1982 to 10.2% in 2021.
The rise of the unaffiliated has been going on now for several decades. But we have not seen ‘unaffiliated’ candidates. That lag time from registration change among successfully elected office holder we saw from the 1950s to the mid-1980s has not taken place.
Instead, what we see is a fascinating pattern of voters supporting candidates at about the same proportion as the Republican and Democratic registration percentages in given districts. This seems to indicate that unaffiliated voters are not really unaffiliated—they just don’t want to be officially associated with either major party.
Even when voters have really good reasons to switch from the ‘natural’ preference in a district, they just don’t really do so. In 2020 voters in House District 47 had a choice of incumbent Diego Hernandez (D), challenger Ryan Gardner (R), and Ashton Simpson (Working Families). Hernandez was opposed by much of the Democratic establishment because of sexual harassment allegations. The Democratic leadership endorsed Simpson.
Registration was 45% Democrats, 16% Republicans, and 39% unaffiliated. Using the ‘Republican/Democrat’ rule of thumb, Democrats should have won by 73% to 26%. Final results were an easy 40% win for Hernandez, Gardner followed with 31%, and Simpson was last at 19%. The Democratic-favored candidates received 68% of the vote; the Republican-favored candidate received 31%. Even with the scandal, the huge chunk of unaffiliated voters broke along party lines similar to the registration of Ds and Rs. [These percentages of Ds and Rs were virtually identical in previous elections when Hernandez had an opponent.]
Candidates not affiliated with either of the major parties just don’t do well, even in districts where unaffiliated voters are now the biggest bloc. Voters do not support them.
A study of a one time “minor” party reveals what needs to happen to better align electoral outcomes with the electorate’s views. In American history, the most successful third party is the Republican Party. The lessons of the Republican rise? To become one of the major parties you need a strong set of issues and a strong candidate. Coming up with both of those has been impossible in most of American and Oregon history.
And Oregon voters show they buy into the two-party model in a big way even if they are unaffiliated.
Here is what we know about our electorate, aside from the patterns of partisan support in given districts:
Republicans and Democrats vote at much higher rates than any other voters. In 2020, 91.3% of Republicans and 90.9% of Democrats voted.
Of the six minor parties, turnouts ranged from 84.3% (Independents) to 59.1% (Working Families).
Unaffiliated voters came in at 64.8%.
What does all this suggest? To have the best democracy, we need all voters to register and cast ballots. This makes the democracy truly reflective of the people. The reforms we have read about and discussed on the Oregon Way blog (voting by ranked choice and other means; open primaries; non-partisan redistricting) are a good move toward the goal of getting more voters to take part.
But the voters themselves are pretty set in their partisan ways whether they register as Ds or Rs or not. Our third parties have not shown themselves to be major players in the political system. And our registered Democrats and Republicans vote at a much higher rate than all others—the 25%+ difference between unaffiliated voters and major-party voters is pretty amazing.
What do the people want? Looking at voting patterns, what the people want is the gridlock and partisanship we have right now.
It took almost thirty years from the ’50s to the ’80s for the new Democratic dominance in Oregon to assert itself at the statewide ballot box. Whatever reforms we implement now will probably take a long time to have major effects on our elective system and who serves in office.
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Re: the claim that voters prefer the two party system and are secret Ds and Rs.
Rubbish.
Say you’re at a 100 person banquets that has 10 items in the drink menu and the rule is whichever drink is ordered most will be served to all. Yiu know 35 will order coffee and 27 will order kombucha. You hate kombucha can tolerate coffee but prefer beer. But you’d be a fool to order anything other than coffee. That doesn’t mean you like coffee or like this system of selecting drinks. You’re just a rational person who is playing the game with these bad rules.