California’s top-two jungle primary is an election oddity. Most states don’t do primary elections this way.
State voters adopted it 16 years ago in hope of seeing more moderate candidates with broader appeal advance to the general elections that decide who wins the seat. Whether it’s lived up to its promise remains up for debate, and it comes with potential for head-scratching results that has led some to say it should be reconsidered.
Historically, states held primary elections so political parties’ registered voters could elect their candidates for partisan public offices, who then would compete against the primary winners from rival parties in the decisive general election.
But critics from both sides of the political divide argued party voters under that old system often chose candidates in low-participation primary elections who were outside mainstream voters’ tastes. They pushed reforms in California and other states to open up primary races and let voters cast ballots for candidates of parties they weren’t registered with to increase choices.
In California in 2010, that led to voters approving the top-two jungle primary. Only a handful of other states — Washington, Louisiana and Nebraska — have something similar at least for some races. Alaska in 2020 adopted a top-four system with ranked choice voting.
So how does California’s jungle primary work?
For starters, it doesn’t apply to every race. The top two applies to most of the formerly partisan offices, now referred to as “voter-nominated.” Those are state constitutional and legislative offices and U.S. congressional offices. But it doesn’t apply to partisan races for county central committees and the big one: U.S. President.
It also doesn’t apply to traditionally nonpartisan offices, including the State Superintendent of Public Instruction and most local public offices such as city councils and county government and school district boards, though primary rules for those races are similar.
For the top-two races, the concept is pretty straightforward. Instead of receiving a partisan ballot, with only Democratic candidates or Republican candidates like they used to back in the day, voters now receive ballots with every qualified candidate, listed with their party affiliation. They can vote for any one of them.
When the ballots are tallied, the two candidates who received the most votes advance regardless of party affiliation to face off against each other in the general election, in which the candidate who gets a majority of votes will win the seat.
What if there are only two candidates in the primary, or more than two, but one wins a majority of the votes in the primary? Will there still be a runoff in the general election, even though a candidate already won a majority of votes? Yes. The top two advance, regardless. Except when they don’t.
Candidates for voter-nominated offices in special elections can win the job outright by getting a majority of the vote in the primary election, eliminating a runoff between the top two, as is done with the non-partisan state superintendent and local office races.
That could play out this summer when voters in the East Bay cast ballots in a special election to fill the rest of the term of former District 14 Rep. Eric Swalwell, who resigned from the House of Representatives in April amid allegations of sexual misconduct, which he’s denied.
In fact, with the house narrowly divided, Democrats tried to work out a deal among Democratic candidates running to succeed Swalwell in the House to agree not to compete in the June 16 special election so that a “caretaker” Democrat not running for a full term might run and win a majority of votes in the primary. That candidate would be seated shortly afterward without an Aug. 18 runoff. But Democrats already running for the full term wouldn’t agree not to compete in the special election, lessening the chance of a majority winner in June.
Strangely, the top two also could produce a top three runoff. In the 2024 primary for former Rep. Anna Eshoo’s District 16 seat, Evan Low and Joe Simitian finished in an apparent tie for second place behind Sam Liccardo. According to the Secretary of State, that would mean all three would have to compete in the general election. A recount however found more votes for Low, who went on to lose the general election race to Liccardo.
California’s biggest race this election season, for governor, has so many credible Democrats in the running dividing the Democratic vote that polls have shown the two leading contenders are two Republicans — in a state where Democrats lead Republicans in voter registration nearly 2-to-1.
Democratic lockouts have happened in the heavily Democratic state under the top-two system in local races. In 2012, a race for the Democratic-leaning 31st Congressional District in the Los Angeles area featured twice as many Democrats as Republicans in the primary, allowing the two Republicans to advance from the primary to ensure a GOP win.
More commonly it’s California’s Republicans who end up locked out at the primary, as happened in the 2018 U.S. Senate race where then state Sen. Kevin de Leon, a Democrat, bested a half dozen Republicans to finish second behind incumbent Democrat Dianne Feinstein in the primary to set up a November intra-party fight for the seat, which Feinstein held.
Candidates also have used the system to shut down a competitive party rival. When Adam Schiff ran for Feinstein’s seat after she died in 2023, he faced a significant challenge from Democratic Rep. Katie Porter. But Schiff ads attacked Republican former baseball star and political novice Steve Garvey in the primary, effectively boosting him among Republican voters. Garvey finished second in the primary, ending Porter’s bid, and Schiff beat Garvey in the general election.
Whether that’s a feature or bug with the state’s current primary format, it’s fueled discussions among party leaders and reformers about whether to further tweak the state’s election format or return to traditional partisan primaries. Both the Democratic and Republican parties had opposed the ballot measure that established California’s top-two system.
There’s no move to do so for now. But that could change depending how things go in the June primary.