Caucuses

At "The Monkey Cage" blog of The Washington Post, political scientists Christopher Karpowitz and Jeremy Pope write:

Moderates in the Republican Party would like to move away from caucuses and toward primaries, believing that more extreme candidates are more likely to come from a caucus rather than a primary. Our new research (gated here and ungated here) suggests that they have a point: Those who attend caucuses have a very different set of issue attitudes than those who take part in primaries. Moreover, Americans tend to agree that caucuses are unfair and give an advantage to the wrong sort of interests.

It’s a standard piece of conventional wisdom that the voters who show up for caucuses are more ideologically extreme than those who vote in primaries. However, the political science literature has not consistently confirmed that conclusion. Our research does something relatively new, however: We took a large survey of Americans and determined who among them had actually participated in a primary or caucus in the 2008 presidential nomination, based on data from state voter files. In other words, we did not rely solely on voters’ imperfect recollections of whether they voted in a primary or caucus (or not at all).

Even after accounting for many other factors, caucus attenders were more ideologically extreme than primary voters. In terms of their willingness to take consistently conservative or liberal positions on the issues, caucus attendees look a lot more like members of Congress than they do average Republicans or Democrats.