Are the Presidential Primaries Democratic?
A critical look at Iowa, New Hampshire, and the 2024 American presidential nominating process
The American presidential nominating system, I have recently argued, is dangerous to our democracy because it is devoid of checks & balances to prevent the rise of demagogues and authoritarians to federal executive power.
Subsequently, I laid out the reform proposals of political scientist Elaine Kamarck, notably the wisdom of incorporating “peer review” into the nomination process in order to weed out these predatory political actors.
Naturally, a counterargument emerges: The primaries are a democratic method for selecting presidential candidates. The choices of Joe Biden and Donald Trump represent the will of the people as expressed at the polls, or caucuses, in Iowa and New Hampshire and, coming up soon, Nevada and South Carolina.
Therefore, the argument continues, we must embrace the primaries and caucuses—in spite of the risks to our Constitution, peace, and security—because we have faith that the Invisible Hand of Democracy will make all well.
Trump won Iowa with 7.8% of the votes of registered Republicans in the state.
As a function of my reading of history and lived experience of the American political system since July 19, 2016, the date of Trump’s first ill-begotten nomination, I do not subscribe to the doctrine that we should blindly surrender the fate of our nation to primaries and caucuses even if they were majoritarian paragons of national voter participation.
But they are not. The primaries and caucuses are not, in fact, democratic, a salient fact that furnishes us with yet another reason to replace them with a superior system that is a better model of representative democracy and one that, simultaneously, checks the rise of annihilators of the Constitution.
Take the example of Trump’s “decisive win” in the Iowa caucus a fortnight ago. The will of the people cemented his victory, right?
Hardly. Only some 15 % of the nearly 720,000 registered Republicans in Iowa even took part this year, and, as is well-known, such caucus goers tilt strongly towards extremist political views.
That’s about 110,000 people in total, and, of them, Trump earned 51%, for a total of 56,110 votes.
Trump got 56,110 votes in his “decisive win” in the Iowa caucus.
That means that Trump won Iowa with only 7.8% of the votes of registered Republicans in the state. Otherwise stated, 56,110 people in Iowa clinched the presidential nomination, at least according to media pundits, for the approximate 47 million registered voters who constitute the Republican Party.
Is that the workings of a healthy democracy, one that we should celebrate and defend for its intrinsic value to the republic, to say nothing of what concerns me most: the fact that the primaries open a door to the Oval Office to demagogues and authoritarians?
Share this essay with a friend or critic:
Email me at eli.merritt@vanderbilt.edu
What about the New Hampshire primary? Trump got 176,392 votes, translating into 54.3%, and Nikki Haley 140,288, or 43.2%.
And, what were the headlines these meagre numbers generated in the media?
Haley is being run out of town after only two elections in two small states wherein Trump won a combined total of 232,502 votes. Does this figure, roughly equal to the population of a single midsized American town, constitute the will of the Republican Party?
Nikki Haley has garnered 17 delegates thus far, compared with Trump’s 32. Not a bad showing. Is that really the end of the Republican primary election season, as the media says?
Not only this. Biden did not compete in New Hampshire but nevertheless won 63.9% of the Democratic vote. Even so, he obtained no delegates. The reason for this is that the Democratic National Committee considers the state’s election to be a rogue primary because it ran ahead of South Carolina's, scheduled to take place on February 3.
The rise of Trump is a direct consequence of a fatally flawed presidential nominating system. A more intelligent system would have blocked him in 2016 and 2020. And, today, it would not be tying the hands of delegates to a known authoritarian.
To say the least, the American presidential primary system is a mess. And, sadly for the nation and the world, the perilous drama has only just begun. Candidate nomination will not formally draw to a close until the summer:
The Republican National Convention in Milwaukee (July 15-18)
The Democratic National Convention in Chicago (August 19-22)
After that, we’ll brace ourselves for a general election season that will only conclude peaceably on November 5 (election day) if Trump, presuming he’s the Republican nominee, wins.
If Biden wins, conversely, we’ll almost certainly spiral into a constitutional crisis as Trump demagogues about a rigged election, likely fomenting violence in yet another illegitimate power grab.
All this is a direct consequence of a fatally flawed presidential nominating system.
A more intelligent system would have blocked Trump in 2016 and 2020. And, today, it would not be tying the hands of delegates to a known authoritarian, forcing them to vote for an ex-president who has been twice impeached, found guilty of rape, and indicted on 91 felony counts for, among other things, attempting to overturn American democracy.
Thank you for reading, especially those of you who support my work with a small annual paid subscription.