Virginia Republicans Win With Preferential Primaries
In recent years, the Republican Party of Virginia has turned to preferential voting – also known as “ranked choice voting” or “RCV” – to pick its nominees.
There’s a simple reason why: Preferential voting helped Virginia Republicans win three statewide races, win the House of Delegates with those coattails, and advance conservative policies in a state where the GOP was written off by many national observers.
Preferential voting primaries strengthened our nominees
The Virginia Republicans used RCV in 2021 in a party run, paper ballot unassembled convention for Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General. That process encouraged more candidates because it lowered the bar to entry and created a better opportunity to win the nomination.
As a result, 17 candidates fanned out across the Commonwealth, signing up over 30,000 delegates. This enabled better engagement with voters, but importantly, without the usual negative attacks on the candidates.
With reduced hostility among all the various campaigns in 2021, the Virginia Republicans were able to unite quickly around their nominees. The GOP was able to show favorable polling numbers which opened previously closed donor wallets. The Republican Governors’ Association had written the race off just six months before the nomination, but invested $15 million by the end of the summer. The united, diverse statewide ticket was able to get critical momentum and rebrand the party while the Democrats were still attacking each other.
The 2021 Republican victory stands in stark contrast to the 2022 midterms, where the GOP fell short of our hopes for a national red wave: Many of our U.S. Senate nominees lost the general election after failing to win a unifying majority during the primary.
Preferential voting allowed Virginia Republicans to unite a bitterly divided party behind a diverse, conservative ticket.
To win a preferential voting election, candidates must win majority support from the primary electorate. Instead of mudslinging, candidates are rewarded for running issues-focused campaigns and finding common ground with their opponents.
The GOP puts its best foot forward when our nominees go into general elections with a strong mandate from party voters. With preferential voting, the spirit of competition that exists within Republican primaries can create a candidate with broad and deep party support.
Virginia Republicans have used preferential voting for the last four election cycles.
Virginia Republicans used preferential voting at their 2020 statewide convention, where they picked former Delegate Rich Anderson as party chair in an efficient “instant runoff” process.
Come 2021, mainstream pundits increasingly saw Virginia as a “blue state” – no Republican had won a statewide election since 2009, and Joe Biden won the state by 11 points – but Glenn Youngkin proved the pundits wrong with the help of preferential voting. Republicans used preferential voting to nominate candidates for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General – and swept all three statewide offices that November.
The Virginia GOP nominated businessman Glenn Youngkin for Governor, former Delegate and state Education Board Vice President Winsome Earle-Sears, and Delegate Jason Miyares for Attorney General. These three rock solid conservatives made up the most diverse statewide ticket in Virginia history.
Preferential voting primaries “help our candidates win… When a primary yields a majority winner, that means more voters are bought in and likely to turn out for that candidate in the general election.” – GOP strategist Eric Wilson
Upon taking office, Youngkin and the new Republican majority in the House of Delegates immediately corrected course in Virginia – returning decisions about childrens’ education back to parents and providing tax relief to Virginia families and businesses.
Preferential voting expands to Republican congressional primaries
After their major statewide victories, Virginia Republicans used preferential voting in four congressional primaries in 2022. Once again, Republicans nominated with preferential voting surpassed expectations in general elections.
Consider the difference between the 10th District which used preferential voting, and the 7th District which used a traditional choose-one primary.
The 10th District nominated Hung Cao with a majority of the vote, while the 7th District nominated Yesli Vega with just 29% of Republicans behind her. A survey of Republicans in those districts found Cao had a +78 net favorability rating, while Vega’s was just +51.
The “also-ran” Republicans in the 10th District preferential primary also had higher favorability ratings than those in the traditional primary in the 7th District. This is good news for the Republican Party of Virginia’s bench of candidates.
In the general election, Cao beat expectations by 4 percentage points in a blue district. In contrast, Vega performed on par with expectations and lost a toss-up seat by 4 points.
Virginia Republicans found their ranked choice ballots intuitive and easy to use. As Hung Cao explained to his supporters, preferential voting is “quite simple. Next to my name, hopefully I’m your candidate, put number one.”
Most recently, Republicans in House of Delegates District 89 used preferential voting to choose Baxter Ennis as their nominee for the 2023 race.
Indiana Case Study
Virginia is not the only state where Republicans are benefitting from preferential primaries. Indiana Republicans used preferential voting in their 2020 convention to win a key election. That year, scandal-plagued incumbent Curtis Hill held a plurality lead in the party’s contest for Attorney General, even though he had tumbling approval ratings and most GOP voters preferred other candidates – but popular conservative leader Todd Rokita won the nomination and went on to win the general election by 16 percentage points.
The Chairman of the Indiana Republican Party hailed their party voting process – which included ranked choice voting – as “very smooth and transparent.”