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Notes
The blanket primary is an alternative to the current U.S. primary system, in which an election is run for candidates from each party separately. The winner from each party, so chosen, then compete in the general election. In the blanket primary, all candidates run in one election, regardless of party affiliation. The two candidates with the most votes advance to face each other in the general election, independent of whether they affiliate with the same party, two different parties, or even no party at all. In this way the blanket primary is a direct challenge to party control of candidate selection.
The module is also paid for by Duke University, support from which we gratefully acknowledge.
The CCES is a 30,000+ person national stratified sample survey administered by YouGov. Half of the questionnaire consists of a common contents asked of all 30,000+ people, and half of the questionnaire consists of team content designed by each participating group and asked of a subset of 1,000 people (additional details available at http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/cces/book/study-design).
YouGov, which administered the CCES, has a great deal of experience in survey-embedded experiments, such as these. The treatment, therefore, was empirically random with respect to relevant variables. Details available upon request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the financial assistance of the National Science Foundation. We also thank, without implicating, Alexandra Cooper and the staff of SSRI for assistance in conducting the survey research. And we acknowledge the comments and suggestions Geoffrey Brennan, Amy McKay, Nicholas Miller, and David Rohde on earlier drafts. Finally, we appreciate the very helpful comments of Nikolai Hoberg, Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard, Sarah Necker, and Florenz Plassmann at the Public Choice World Congress in March, 2012 in Miami, Florida. Any errors or infelicities that remain are entirely the fault of the authors.
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Appendix: Specific survey question
Appendix: Specific survey question
In the table that follows, the top row subjects are presented with choice (a) versus choice (b). The bottom row subjects are presented with choice (a) versus choice (c).
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Aldrich, J., Munger, M. & Reifler, J. Institutions, information, and faction: an experimental test of Riker’s federalism thesis for political parties. Public Choice 158, 577–588 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-012-0040-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-012-0040-z