What is an example of crossover voting?

As we progress through the primary season and ready for the midterm elections, there have been numerous stories of voters switching their party affiliation and voting in a different primary election to sway the outcome.

In June, The New York Times published an article – titled “In Boebert’s District, as Elsewhere, Democrats Surge Into G.O.P. Primary”. The article tells the story of a Coloradoan who had never voted Republican in her life, registering as unaffiliated to vote against Rep. Lauren Boebert in the primary. “The Colorado crossover voters are part of a broader trend of Democrats intervening to try to beat back the extremes of the G.O.P., in Georgia, North Carolina, Colorado, Utah and elsewhere” it goes on to read. There are many other examples.

We’ll likely see more stories like this in the coming weeks as we near the Wyoming primary and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) tries to appeal to the small number of the Democratic voters in the state to win her primary.

All this coverage begs the question: How common is crossover voting historically? Does it have an impact in primaries?

Right now, we don’t have enough data to tell a complete story for the 2022 primaries, but using TargetSmart VotesCast files1, we are able to look at the historical baseline by looking at voter data from 2018 and 20202. Here’s what we found:

The short of it is that crossover voting rarely happens in large enough numbers to sway the outcome of any primary.

In 2018, in most states that had available primary election data in our database, crossover voters rarely exceeded 1% for Democrats (i.e., typically less than 1% of registered Democrats who took part in primaries voted in the Republican primaries) and 1.5% for Republicans (Figure 1). Three states that exceeded these averages by considerable margins are Idaho, Iowa, and Wyoming.

Figure 1. 2018 Primary Statewide Crossover Rates

In Idaho, 5.4% of registered Democrats (1,664 total crossover voters) voted in the 2018 Republican primary. Two heated races here were the Republican primaries for Governor and Lieutenant Governor. Current Governor Brad Little won by 9,070 votes (4.7%) . The Lt. Governor’s race was even tighter, with Janice McGeachin winning against Steve Yates by 2,829 votes (1.6%). Looking at the absolute numbers, it is clear that neither of these races was decided by Democratic crossover voters.

In Iowa, 10% of Republicans switched parties and voted in the 2018 Democratic primary. Absent an obvious reason on the Democratic ballot to explain this, it likely reflected uncompetitive primaries on the Republican ticket – one potential driver for the Republican crossover rate might have been the race for the House District 1, where an incumbent Republican, Rod Blum, was to face the winner of a 4-way Democratic primary (the winner of which was Abby Finkenauer, who would eventually win that house seat).

In Wyoming, a whopping 25% of registered Democrats (5,349) voted in the 2018 Republican primary. The most likely reason to account for this surge in Democratic crossover voters would have been to participate in the competitive Republican gubernatorial primary, where incumbent state treasurer Mark Gordon (R) faced off against former longtime GOP donor Foster Friess (R). Wyoming being a heavily Republican state, voting in a Republican gubernatorial primary is in practice a general election of sorts. Gordon won by 9,109 votes (7.8%), a margin nearly doubling the total number of Democratic crossover voters participating in the election.

The Democratic presidential primaries in 2020 provided an incentive for Republicans to cross over regardless of statewide races, with an incumbent Republican president and no serious challengers atop the GOP ballot. Crossover rates in many states where we have data illustrate this pattern (Figure 2). Of the eight non-caucus states where we can conduct this analysis on the presidential primary, Republican crossover rates exceed Democratic crossover rates in all of them. Only the non-presidential primaries in Iowa – where crossover voting roughly balanced out in each direction – and Wyoming – a state where the GOP primary serves as the de facto general election – showed Democratic crossover rates exceeding those among Republicans.

Figure 2. 2020 Primary Statewide Crossover Rates3

The question remains: will crossover voting in 2022 prove to be consistent with historic trends, and will it have a significant impact on election outcomes? Will Democrats cross over en masse to meddle in Republican primaries, as some reports claim?

The simple answer is that it’s too early to tell, but most likely the answer will be no. Crossover voting has occurred at low rates in each of the previous two election cycles, and nothing fundamental about the political landscape has shifted enough to suggest crossover rates will increase in the future. Any responsible coverage would be wise to contextualize this year’s trends with historic precedent, or risk advancing another false narrative that wrongly undermines faith in our elections.

1 VotesCast contains historical voter data including voter party affiliation and participation in select elections, including markers for closed, semi-closed, and open primaries.

2 For this analysis, we compared party registration data in mid-November prior to the election year of interest to primary participation in the election year. For example, for 2018 crossover data, we used registration data from week 46 of 2017. In this example, voters with Republican registration in November 2017 who voted in the 2018 Democratic primary would be considered crossover voters.

3 Bars for AZ, DE, IA, ID, and WY reflect non-presidential primaries. All other states reflect presidential primaries.

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