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Here’s How California’s ‘Jungle Primary’ System Works

From left, Mai Khanh Tran; Ashley Nicole Black, a correspondent for “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee”; Andy Thorburn; and Sam Jammal, at a candidate forum on Saturday. Ms. Tran, Mr. Thorburn and Mr. Jammal are running in a crowded race for California’s 39th Congressional District.Credit...Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call, via Associated Press

The California primary is June 5. It’s one of the most anticipated voting days in the lead-up to the 2018 midterm elections.

LOS ANGELES — It was supposed to be a cutting-edge election reform, a way to take the party out of politics: an open primary in which labels like Republican and Democratic were tossed out and candidates were chosen, presumably, on their merits. The system, adopted by California voters in 2010, was meant to make politics less polarizing.

But eight years later, the highest-stakes midterm election in a long time is causing all sorts of angst for Democrats and Republicans in California. And that’s in no small part because of what is known as the jungle primary.

O.K., before we get to how it’s working, can you explain the system?

In the old days, each party nominated a candidate — at a party convention or in a primary — with the idea that a Republican and a Democrat would face off in the November election. In theory, that would present voters with a choice of two governing philosophies.

But critics — including Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was the Republican governor at the time — argued that the system was producing ideologically extreme candidates who were forced to appeal to the most fervent wings of their party, and that was leading to gridlock instead of governance. The solution? An open, nonpartisan primary in June, with the first- and second-place candidates heading to the November election, no matter which party they represented. The theory was that candidates would be forced to moderate their appeals to win a broader section of the electorate.

Here are the pieces you need to read to understand the state, and what may happen there on Tuesday.

Republicans are struggling to field candidates on the ballot in November.

Meanwhile, Democrats, too, are wary of a possible disaster.

In farm country, the tide of ‘resistance’ is running dry.

Everything you need to know about the top races in the state.

That sounds reasonable enough. So what’s the problem?

Election reforms that might sound good in a political science class produce, as often as not, unintended consequences. And at the time, party leaders from both sides in California warned that one such consequence of the top-two system could be that major parties would get shut out in the primary, leading to a November ballot between two candidates from the same party. That would happen if multiple candidates from the same party crowded the ballot, canceling each other out as they divided a finite group of voters. And what kind of choice would that be?

You could see how party bosses, facing the prospect of losing power here, might make that case. But has that really happened?

Yes — twice so far in federal elections (more often in state ones). The first time was in a congressional race in 2012, when a Democrat was blocked from the general election in the primary, leading to a Republican victory in a Democratic district. (The Democrats recaptured the seat in 2014). The other was in the 2016 United States Senate race that elected Kamala Harris, a Democrat who had no Republican opponent in the November contest.

That doesn’t sound like a lot.

Christian Grose, a professor of political science at the University of Southern California, who is writing a book on the top-two system, said the concern was “overblown” and the scenario feared by critics would, in all likelihood, rarely come to be. “The top-two primary reform has made a big difference,” he said. “It has obviously disrupted California’s politics, in a good way, or else the two major parties’ consultants would not be complaining about it.”

Still, this year seems different. And it’s a problem for both Republicans and Democrats. Let’s take this one party at a time.

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Voters in San Francisco on Election Day in 2016. The midterm elections are causing all sorts of angst for Democrats and Republicans in California.Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times

California is the center of the action for Democrats looking to take back Congress. There are at least seven Republican-held seats vulnerable to a Democratic takeover. But in three of them, Democrats are in real danger of getting shut out because they have too many candidates competing for too few votes, opening a way for two Republicans to win those top two seats.

Got it. What about Republicans?

There is a real possibility that there will be no Republican candidate on the ballot for Senate or governor this November. A lot of people in both parties here find that a little jaw-dropping in the state of Ronald Reagan and Richard M. Nixon.

Well to state the obvious, does that really matter? Can a California Republican win a state election these days?

Fair point. It’s been more than a decade since Republicans elected anyone to statewide office in California, and their situation is only getting more dire, as party registration continues to sink. They now make up 28 percent of the electorate, just barely edging out the percentage of voters who don’t register in a party. Democrats make up 43 percent. If the two presumed Democratic front-runners — Senator Dianne Feinstein, seeking re-election, and Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor, running for governor — find themselves facing Republican candidates this fall, well, let’s just say they can probably book a cruise to the Greek islands this September.

Mr. Newsom has been pretty blatant about this. At a recent debate, the moderator, Chuck Todd of NBC News, asked the candidates what they thought of the top-two system and Mr. Newsom made clear he would be delighted to run against a Republican opponent. “I’m very honest about it,” he told Mr. Todd, gesturing to two Republicans on the stage. “Either one of these will do.”

And he has been running advertisements attacking one of his Republican opponents, John Cox, a businessman, for opposing gun control. There’s only one reason Mr. Newsom is doing that: To rally conservative voters around Mr. Cox, who has won the endorsement of President Trump.

There are two potential problems here. The first is that without Republican statewide candidates at the top of the ticket, the party may have a harder time drawing its voters to the polls — which could undercut the critical task of protecting those House seats. (That also means, in the this topsy-turvy world, that Mr. Newsom’s effort to bolster Mr. Cox could have the effect of helping Republicans with their top political priority of the year). The second is a high school civics class question: should voters have a choice of two different philosophies?

Let’s put aside the Republican and Democratic talk for a minute. Is the system producing the kind of political moderation that was promised back in 2010?

That’s a matter of debate. Mr. Schwarzenegger said the other day that he thought the system was working precisely as he promised it would. “Our politicians have moved toward the middle while around the country others move to the extremes,” he said in a statement. “Polls show that since our reforms, legislative approval has skyrocketed in California while it has remained embarrassingly low in Washington. All Americans deserve better representation, and California’s reforms have done just that.”

Eric C. Bauman, the Democratic state chairman who opposed the system from the beginning, would beg to disagree. “It turned out about as poorly as I knew it would,” he said. “Inevitably we get blocked out of a few races and they get blocked out of a few. That’s the way this thing works.”

Asked whether he saw any redeeming aspects to the reform — air-quotes might be appropriate here — Mr. Bauman was emphatic. “No. I don’t,” he said. “I think it was sold on a lie — to people who were really disgusted with lefty politicians and righty politicians — that this would elect more moderates.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: It’s a Primary Without the Parties, Just Like They Planned It. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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