I'd argue that primaries are a serious bug rather than a feature of the US political system, at least in places where only registered members of a party can vote in that party's primary. By requiring candidates for the general election to first pass through a gauntlet composed of the most die-hard voters from one part of the political spectrum, you frequently end up with candidates who are way more extreme than the electorate in general.

This seems to be true even if the party in question is the minority party for a given race. Instead of picking a candidate with crossover appeal from voters in the majority, they end up with some raging partisan who can't possibly win, making it effectively a one horse race. Another major failure mode is that even in pretty evenly split areas it encourages pandering to the extreme fringe of the party and winning by a narrow margin rather than winning with a broad coalition because broad coalitions with crossover appeal don't help you get out of the primary. This has been weaponized in recent years, with moderates being threatened with primary challenges if they don't follow the party line, even though this misrepresents the politics of their actual voter base.

A couple states (notably California) simply have a primary election to determine who the 2 candidates will be in the general election. They're often both from the same party in "one party" districts where people overwhelmingly prefer one of the parties.

California's voting districts are gerrymandered along party lines, so the districts are about 75% safe seats for one party, and 25% safe seats for another party, despite the last Presidential election only being 58% for the one party and 42% for the other.

Despite this, California has some of the most egregious pandering to extremes within the parties (due to the safe seats) and has a reputation for having "extreme" candidates.

> By requiring candidates for the general election to first pass through a gauntlet composed of the most die-hard voters from one part of the political spectrum, you frequently end up with candidates who are way more extreme than the electorate in general.

It's not always that they're more extreme, it's largely the people who have the extra time to go to additional elections or caucusing. Ex: retirees. And this is affected each party differently.

In practice it actually works the other way around - when primaries are restricted to actual party members, it tends to moderate the candidates because the "smoke-filled rooms" emphasize ability to build coalitions through consensus. But once you open them up to basically anyone who is willing to declare party affiliation, those people vote mostly according to their beliefs - they don't participate in internal party politics otherwise so they don't value consensus building - and that's why Repubs got radicalized first.

One way to think about it is: Imagine an electorate that constitutes a bell curve along a left-right axis. The mode of the bell curve represents a milquetoast moderate position, with the tails representing extremes. Different electoral systems can have different biases:

* You can have a "heavy-tailed" congress, where extremists are overrepresented.

* You can have a "thin-tailed" congress, where moderates are overrepresented.

* You can have a "representative" congress, where the range of views in congress looks very similar to the population at large.

At first blush, for the sake of policy stability, a "thin-tailed" congress appears desirable.

But there is also an interesting argument that it's important not to disempower extremists. Democracy could be considered as a "safety valve" that empowers groups to resolve disagreements cooperatively. If some groups don't feel their views are represented, they might condemn the system and seek other ways for their voices to be heard. Something like the 60s civil rights movement in the US could be seen as an example of this. Arguably, the 60s would've been more stable, if the US electoral system wasn't as disenfranchising to minorities with "extreme" views relative to the median at that time.

I can't think of any arguments for a heavy-tailed congress though.

The weird thing about the US system is on the one hand there is the promotion of extremists, but on the other hand, authors like Ezra Klein complain about excessive "veto points" and checks and balances that prevent elected officials from accomplishing stuff. Individually these seem like flaws, but it might be bad to fix one without fixing the other.

I think the US system sucks in absolute terms, but has also worked remarkably well given that it was designed in 1787. "By our estimate, national constitutions have lasted an average of only seventeen years since 1789" https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/lifespan-written-constitut...

People love to complain about "American exceptionalism", but from my perspective, it contributes to a sense of civic pride that's kept the wheels on the bus for such a long time despite a lousy constitution. So I'm concerned that it may be going away.

The American systems elects unpopular candidates, and then gives them very little power.

Makes sense, I guess.

> you frequently end up with candidates who are way more extreme than the electorate in general.

I agree (as a non-American), I think the US primaries system is weird, but how does this not apply to other systems where it’s just a small handful of political insiders that select who runs?

Is it the case that this middle ground is the worst of all worlds?

If you mean Presidential primaries, they're a mix of both popular selection and insider selection.

Parties always have a favored inside candidate, but they have to actually convince folks of the candidate.

This happens a lot in American politics, especially at the local elections where we elect positions that are non-political. The governor appoints a Sheriff or Coroner, but they have to face an election in a few weeks.

I'd like to try a system where everybody had to use the same process to get on the ballot and then parties could endorse one of them (and probably have that indicated on the ballot).

> On the other hand, I suppose we do have primaries in the US. Sounds like that's not a thing in Scandinavia.

Whilst we do not have primary elections, you can vote for individual candidates on the ballots, moving them up on the party list. This strategy does actually work to get candidates further down on the list over other candidates that would have been selected first.