New Study Finds Nonpartisan Primaries Reduce the Influence of Wealthy Donors

 

As more and more states look into and pursue nonpartisan open primary initiatives and legislation, partisan insiders are finding more creative ways to attack including claiming that nonpartisan primaries are more susceptible to dark money expenditures. But in a new piece in RealClearPolitics, Researcher and Democracy Fellow at Unite America, Rich Barton points out this couldn’t be further from the truth: “Nonpartisan primaries significantly reduce the influence of wealthy donors in elections.”

Using data from the Federal Election Commission he analyzed all campaign contributions from Political Action Committees (PACs) and independent expenditures from Super PACs and found that:

“Ideological PACs like Club for Growth Action on the right and Protect our Future on the left, bankrolled by millionaires, have much less influence in states with nonpartisan primaries. In fact, nonpartisan primaries curb the power of ideological PACs by about two-thirds relative to partisan primaries.”