closed primary – Across Indiana, Kentucky and Louisiana—and in states like Pennsylvania and Alaska—lawmakers and election reform advocates are pointing to a simple but corrosive mechanism: when primary elections are run within parties, voters who don’t match the party’s line l
By the time many voters even get to the general election, the outcome for a large share of U.S. House seats has already been decided somewhere else: in the party-run primary, where who is allowed to vote can be the difference between compromise and political survival.
In just the past several weeks. GOP primary voters in places like Indiana. Kentucky and Louisiana have forced out state and federal lawmakers who crossed President Trump. including over redistricting. Those primary fights are happening as the mid-decade redistricting efforts—initiated last year by Trump—have further reduced the number of competitive U.S. House districts. More than 90% of seats are now considered relatively safe for one party or the other.
That leaves primary elections carrying outsized weight. Reformers argue that when primaries are closed—run by parties themselves. excluding independent voters and often drawing far fewer participants than general elections—elected officials end up prioritizing party loyalty over their own political judgment.
John Opdycke, founder and president of the group Open Primaries, described the dynamic as a kind of pre-vote power grab. “There has been a ratcheting up. a ramping up of both the willingness and the ability of both the Democrats and the Republicans to shape outcomes before the voters get a chance to have a say. ” he said. “And that’s really devastating.”.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., put the issue in personal terms. In his view. the closed primary process in Pennsylvania—where only voters registered with a particular party can cast a ballot—precludes him from becoming the kind of political independent his district would otherwise reward. Fitzpatrick represents what he called a truly competitive district, and he says the structure still pulls him away from compromise.
He told NPR in April that the fear of being ousted by a more extreme opponent during the next primary cycle forces members of Congress to play defense instead of reaching for common ground. “You have so many people that are co-opted from doing the right thing and supporting the right policy because of politics. ” he said. “It’s hurting our country.”.
Fitzpatrick does have a path to run as an independent-minded candidate in Pennsylvania’s general election. But if he chose to sit out the primary, he said he would face two major-party candidates instead of one in November, potentially making his race even more difficult.
He also called for broader voting access. “We should at least agree that every American citizen should never be denied the right to vote in every single election,” he said, urging states and parties to embrace open primaries.
Still, Fitzpatrick’s end goal goes beyond opening up access at the ballot box. He backs a federal ban on partisan gerrymandering and argues that the bigger two-party framework is failing too. “Anybody that’s taking an honest view of our government and has seen how the dysfunction has stifled and stymied progress knows that the two-party system is broken. ” he told NPR. “You cannot fit 340 million Americans in one of two boxes. You just can’t. There are too many problems that are nuanced, a lot of gray area, to get the policy right.”.
A Louisiana Senate fight showed how the primary rules themselves can reshape political outcomes. In 2021, Sen. Bill Cassidy. R-La. joined with Senate Democrats and six of his Republican colleagues in a vote to convict Trump on impeachment charges tied to Trump’s effort to remain in office after the 2020 election loss. Trump then worked to drum Cassidy out of office and recruited an opponent to challenge him in this year’s GOP primary.
Cassidy’s defeat turned on a rule change Louisiana made before the vote. Louisiana had long used a form of open primary for Senate seats. with all candidates on the same ballot and any registered voter able to participate. If no candidate won a majority. the top two would advance to a head-to-head runoff—leaving room. at least in theory. for Democrats or voters not affiliated with a party to support Cassidy strategically to prevent a more Trump-aligned replacement.
Ahead of this year’s election, Louisiana’s GOP-controlled legislature adopted a semi-closed system. When the primary was held in mid-May. only Republican voters—or unaffiliated voters who opted for a GOP ballot—were eligible to weigh in. The change, Cassidy said, disenfranchised voters. He lobbied Democrats to change their party affiliation ahead of the primary vote.
He lost soundly, finishing in third place with roughly 25% of the vote. Cassidy continued to speak out against what he argued pushes politicians toward extremes. “Americans are exhausted by a culture that treats every disagreement as betrayal. Our constitutional system was designed around debate, persuasion, and compromise,” he wrote on X.
In Alaska, the same voter-access question has played out differently—helping explain why one Republican senator credits open primary reforms with her political survival.
In 2010, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, lost her state primary to a hard-right challenger. At the time, the party’s primary was only open to registered Republicans and unaffiliated voters. Murkowski. then seen as more moderate than many GOP colleagues. chose to compete in the general election as a write-in candidate. Her campaign included a spelling bee television spot teaching people how to spell her last name. It worked: Murkowski became the first senator in more than 50 years to win without her name on the ballot.
Then Alaska changed the system. Since 2022, Alaska primary voters have used a single ballot on which all candidates for statewide offices appear. The top four candidates, regardless of party, advance to the general election. Murkowski, who backed the impeachment conviction of Trump in 2021, won reelection after the state implemented those changes. She said that the open structure insulated lawmakers from party pressure.
She told NPR that “I think it certainly benefits us in Alaska.” She added that “Over 60% of the electorate [in Alaska] says, ‘I don’t like to align myself with either the Republican or Democrat Party,’” and said closed primaries limit participation to a narrow group.
Murkowski argued that top-four primary systems shift control away from parties. “When you have closed primaries. it really limits to a very small number those who are eligible to participate. ” she said. “Top-four primary systems help to insulate lawmakers from pressure from political parties,” she continued. “Obviously the parties don’t like that because they want control,” she added. “I think it should be the people that are in control — and not the parties.”.
Asked whether other states adopting open, top-four primary systems would benefit the Senate, Murkowski said, “I think it certainly benefits us in Alaska.” She remains the only Republican senator who backed Trump’s impeachment to win reelection.
Reformers say resistance is becoming harder to overcome, especially as the two parties see less opportunity to redraw districts competitively. Opdycke argued that the gerrymandering battle this year has supercharged interest among party leaders to close primaries. “Now what we’re seeing is that the parties have said. ‘OK. we’ve gerrymandered the country into oblivion. there’s not much more gerrymandering that we can do. Now we’ve got to start shutting down these open primaries,’” he explained. “And the Democrats are doing it and the Republicans are doing it.”.
For several years, Republicans across the country have been working to close their primaries. Some Democrats, Opdycke said, have also looked at doing the same. In California. with the possibility of two Republicans advancing from the gubernatorial primary. there is an effort underway to get rid of the state’s nonpartisan primary system—one of the few in the country.
Troiano’s Unite America group has been pushing for states to adopt systems like California’s. But in 2024. voters in a number of states rejected ballot measures that would have created nonpartisan primary systems. dealt a significant blow to reform efforts. Troiano said his organization is now focused on fighting bills in about a dozen states that would close party primaries to independent voters.
He also worries about how easily the bar for primary fights is being lowered. Troiano said that in earlier years, party members had to be “really out of line” to get primaried. “Today voting with your party 90% of the time now is sufficient reason to get a primary challenger and someone to replace you. ” he said.
Opdycke pushed back on a popular assumption that open or nonpartisan primaries automatically produce more moderate candidates. Instead, he argued that the primary structure can reward isolation and punish cross-ideological work. “They can’t sit down with them. They can’t even be seen in the same room with them because the primary structure punishes any kind of collaboration. you know. heterodox activity. ” he said. “They cannot reach across the aisle. They can’t build weird coalitions. They can’t talk to people with whom they might disagree on 90% of issues, but they have overlap on 10.”.
That loss of overlap matters, because voters’ mood toward Washington has changed over time—even as the map has become less competitive and primaries have grown more consequential.
In 2022. when NPR. PBS News and Marist last polled voters on whether they believe it is more important for government officials in Washington to “compromise to find solutions” or “stand on principle even if it means gridlock. ” roughly three-quarters preferred compromise. Four years later. amid a brutal redistricting fight and even fewer competitive races. 86% of Americans say they disapprove of Congress’ job performance.
For lawmakers watching their political future narrow to a party-controlled contest. the argument from reformers lands with a bluntness that doesn’t require prediction. The primary calendar is where pressure gets applied first—before general-election voters can weigh in—and the country’s most crowded argument is now being decided in the smallest rooms.
United States politics Congress primary elections closed primaries open primaries gerrymandering redistricting party primaries polarization Brian Fitzpatrick Bill Cassidy Lisa Murkowski John Opdycke Unite America Open Primaries