Abstract
It is well known to political scientists that “changing the rules changes the game.” As a result of the recent Supreme Court ruling in Tashjian v. Republican Party of Connecticut (1986), many state parties and legislatures are currently debating the choice between open and closed primaries. This article is an attempt to measure the impact of an open primary system by estimating how the outcome of previous presidential primary elections might have been altered if independents and partisans of the opposing party had been allowed to vote. Using data from the American National Election Studies of 1972, 1976, 1980, and 1984, the projected vote totals obtained under different types of primary systems show that the outcome of the election is affected only when the absence of a primary contest within one party results in a high level of strategic voting—a scenario that was possible in the 1972 and 1984 elections. Otherwise, the projected outcomes using various open primary types are not significantly different from ones obtained using a closed primary system.
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