"Democrats Concerned..."

Democrats fretting about elections is perhaps the easiest column for a political journalist to write.  There are a host of structural issues that disadvantge Democrats in the Congress.  Democrats cluster in cities; that forms a natural gerrymander.  Democrats cluster in high population states that get the same number of Senators as lower population rural states, another natural gerrymander.

California is considered key for flipping the House back to Democratic control.  The worry was that California's unusual "jungle primary" would deprive Democrats of fielding a candidate in swing districts.  The way a jungle primary works is that all interested candidates appear on the ballot.  The top two vote getters move on to the general election.  Statewide, this usually means that two Democrats face off for the office, whereas if there are a host of Democrats running for a contested House seat, they could split support and two Republicans could advance with, say, 25% and 17%  of the votes, while Democrats split the remaining 58%. 

This disaster appears to be averted.

There is an argument for two-round elections that require the winner to get a majority.  Let's say that you're electing a Senator, and the Democrat gets 48%  of the vote, the Republican get 42%, the Green party 5% and the Libertarian 5%.  This allows everyone to vote their conscious in round one, but then vote tactically in round two.  The problem is that Americans both vote too frequently and therefore don't vote in higher numbers.  Any two round election would need to incorporate active efforts to encourage voting, including removing barriers to voting.

The jungle primary, however, is a fairly flawed system, as it strips the party of much power to influence who the nominee might be.  There looks to be a few cases where the preferred candidate lost to a neophyte by a few thousand votes.  A party primary would have offered more clarity. 

Like most things Democrats obsess over, this turned out not to be as bad as they feared, but it could have been a disaster.  It will be interesting to see if California makes any changes.