Candidate-packed US House races may backfire on Democrats
Lori Trahan, center, a candidate in the Democratic primary for the 3rd Congressional District of Massachusetts, talks with voters at a “candi-dating” event in Carlisle, Mass., while Keith St. John, another candidate, waits for his turn to speak.
LOWELL, Mass. — It is a clown car of a congressional race, with so many Democrats running for an open seat in this district, northwest of Boston, that they do not all fit on one stage. In their first debate, when 14 candidates were in the race, one had to sit in the audience.
At another event, the contenders took part in a form of speed-dating called ‘‘candi-dating,’’ switching chairs every 15 minutes to try to charm a new set of voters.
As the candidates try to stand out from the pack, voters are left scrutinizing an unwieldy Denny’s-size menu of options.
‘‘It’s annoying that there are so many candidates,’’ said Carol Carbonell, 73, a retired schoolteacher who attended a ‘‘meet and greet’’ at an art gallery in Lowell for one of them.
Linda Copp, 69, a writer and Carbonell’s partner, said she hoped some would drop out. ‘‘Otherwise,’’ she said, ‘‘someone is going to win with very few votes.’’
Her fear is well-founded. The only independent poll of likely Democratic voters shows the leader of the pack with just 11 percent of the vote — with 58 percent undecided ahead of the September primary.
Across the country, record numbers of candidates are running this year for House seats, especially those in which the incumbent is not seeking re-election. Democrats in particular, and women especially, have been galvanized by their antipathy toward President Donald Trump and their belief that the party has a shot at taking back the House.
In New Hampshire, nine Democrats are competing for an open seat based in Manchester. In Tuesday’s primaries in California, voters will face a dizzying list of at least 16 names on the ballots in each of three districts; Democrats are terrified that their glut of candidates will splinter the vote and allow Republicans to slip through under the state’s top-two system.
Multi-candidate races suggest robust engagement in participatory democracy and offer voters a wide range of choices. But the surge of candidates means that in some districts, the winners are likely to win primaries with far short of a majority — raising questions of whether crowded fields bolster democracy or undermine it. In a suburban Philadelphia district, where 10 Democrats competed in a May primary, the victor received less than 29 percent of the vote.
‘‘In these races with lots of candidates, you usually end up with one who wins only a plurality,’’ said Joshua Dyck, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
‘‘The danger is that that isn’t necessarily the person who has the greatest support,’’ he said. ‘‘And you’re violating simple principles of majority rule.’’ Such packed fields are spurring more talk of ranked-choice voting, in which voters rank their choices and a winner must obtain a majority.
The California system sends the two highest votegetters, regardless of party, to the general election. Neither Republicans nor Democrats are guaranteed a spot in every November race.
Democrats worry two Republicans could make the runoff in several U.S. House contests. Some refer to the system adopted in 2010 as the "jungle primary" due to its free-for-all nature.
Then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said it would encourage candidates to adopt more moderate positions rather than appeals to the party base. But there’s little evidence to show that’s working widely.
Massachusetts has seen crowded congressional primaries before, in which candidates won