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125 Pol. Sci. Q. 425 (2010-2011)
Are Caucuses Bad for Democracy?

handle is hein.journals/pclscceqry125 and id is 425 raw text is: Are Caucuses Bad for Democracy? COSTAS PANAGOPOULOS On 4 March 2008, Texas held both primary elections and caucuses statewide to select delegates to the Democratic National Convention. This unique, hybrid procedure, dubbed the Texas Two-Step, took place on the same day and was open to the same universe of voters, but the similarities did not extend much further. Participation in the primary, in which nearly 2.9 million ballots were cast, vastly exceeded turnout in the caucuses, which attracted an estimated 1.1 million voters across the state. This is not atypical for caucuses, which tend to attract fewer participants than primaries. More crucially, the two elections yielded different outcomes. With 50.9 percent of the vote, Hillary Clinton bested Barack Obama's 47.4 percent in the primary, but Obama won the caucuses with support from 56.2 percent of participants, compared to Clinton's 43.7 percent. The results in Texas mirrored a more general pattern in the 2008 contest for the Democratic nomination, in which caucus participants favored Obama while primary voters were more favorable to Clinton. In the end, Obama won in 14 out of 16 caucus states, while Clinton was victorious in 22 out of 39 primaries.' Are such differential outcomes byproducts of systematic differences between primary elections and caucuses? If so, is one system of preference expression superior to the other? These questions and the results observed in the 2008 cycle highlight the impact of institutional variation on voter preferences and election outcomes. Put more bluntly, the rules of the game matter. Scholars and practitioners alike have acknowledged this reality, and have grappled consistently with evaluating the effects of electoral institutions and implementing reforms accordingly.2 In 'David Epstein, Massimo Morelli, and Sharyn O'Halloran. Caucuses and Primaries under Pro- portional Representation (paper presented at the Workshop on the Political Economy of Democ- racy, Barcelona, Spain (5-7 June 2008). 2Bruce Cain, Todd Donovan, and Caroline J. Tolbert, eds., Democracy in the States: Experiments in Election Reform (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2008). COSTAS PANAGOPOULOS is assistant professor of political science and Director of the Cen- ter for Electoral Politics and the Master's Program in Elections and Campaign Management at Fordham University. Political Science Quarterly Volume 125 Number 3 2010 425

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