Are caucuses less democratic than primaries?

Question

The Washington State 2016 presidential election story makes the mechanism of caucuses seem less democratic than primaries. It seems the Democratic party caucuses, rather than the later popular vote in Washington state primary elections, controlled delegates at the Democratic National Convention. At least in Washington State, some votes matter more than others.

In March of 2016, the state Democratic Party held a caucus, where Bernie Sanders won almost 73% of the caucuses' votes, and 74 delegates were "pledged" to Sanders, as opposed to 27% of caucuses' votes and 27 delegates pledged to Hillary Clinton.

Then in May a "non-binding presidential primary", where Clinton received 52% of the popular vote, and Sanders 48%. However, being non-binding there were no delegates pledged as a result.

In a report of the roll call at the DNC convention in July 2016, it seems clear that the Washington State delegation honored the caucus results, rather than the primary election results. While this did not alter the convention's outcome, it seems like caucuses (like the electoral college) have the potential of distorting election results, permitting political tactics to override the popular vote.

Would changing the Democratic party rules regarding caucuses make an improvement similar to the elimination of the Electoral College?

Answer 1

It would depend on whether you would consider a primary or a caucus to be more democratic or not.

Caucuses in some ways resemble the true democratic ideal. You gather people in a room and they choose who to vote for. Then motivated supporters of each candidate talk up their candidates and people decide. Then sometimes people adjust per the discussions or not.

You could argue that this is what democracy is all about or you could argue that it denies people the right to a private vote.

Caucuses sometimes help the "non-established" candidate allowing new, and qualified candidates to make a difference in the debate, while you could say the lack of privacy could prevent others from sticking with a candidate who they might otherwise have chosen because of social pressure.

There is no question that a primary system more represents the modern electoral system, but does not encourage as much political dialogue as a caucus because of the inherent privacy of the decision. Privacy may be of greater importance to consider because of today's political climate.

Answer 2

Would changing the Democratic party rules regarding caucuses make an improvement similar to the elimination of the electoral college?

Only if you assume that the result of the non-binding presidential primary was the correct result and the caucus vote was the wrong result. And that seems to be rather begging the question. Sure, if you assume that the primary vote was correct, then eliminating the incorrect caucus result would improve things. If you assume that the caucus vote was correct, then eliminating the primary would improve things.

While this did not alter the convention's outcome, it seems like caucuses (like the electoral college) has the potential of distorting election results, permitting political insiders to override the popular vote.

If caucuses favor political insiders, then why didn't Hillary Clinton win? One might easily argue that primaries favor political insiders, as the political insider won them. Meanwhile, political outsider Bernie Sanders won in caucuses.

Clinton also won superdelegates, who clearly favor political insiders.

If you actually want to make candidate selection more democratic, my suggestion would be to eliminate partisan primaries and replace them with ranked voting (Condorcet, IRV, Score, etc.). Take the top two candidates and have a general election run-off. The current system encourages extremes over moderates because someone who appeals to both parties can only get votes from one. Meanwhile, the extremist who only appeals to one party doesn't feel that limitation the same way.