Dem
47
GOP
53
The DNC knows that the there will probably be a couple of dozen candidates running for president in 2028, and it needs to find a way to arrange primaries to make sure the candidate chosen is a strong candidate in the general election. One bug in the system has been mostly fixed: caucuses. In 2016, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) discovered and utilized this bug extensively. His campaign realized that many of the deep red states, where there are hardly any Democrats, used very sparsely attended caucuses to elect their delegates to the Democratic National Convention. So he sent people to states like Idaho, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming to get a few thousand supporters to the caucuses there. He won all of them. Headlines like: "Sanders sweeps the Arizona, Idaho, and Utah caucuses" gave the impression of more support than there really was because the number of people who turned out there was rather small. It was a clever strategy and we credit Bernie for using it, but caucuses are not a good way to pick the nominee with the best chance of winning the general election. Caucuses famously appeal to True Believers and high-information voters, and general elections attract mostly people who do NOT fit those descriptions.
The system used for years, with Iowa and New Hampshire going first, didn't work so well and the attempt to put South Carolina first is going nowhere because states set the primary dates and South Carolina is not especially interested in helping the Democrats. So the DNC is looking at new ways of running primaries. One of them is ranked-choice voting (RCV). Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, and others have pitched that. The idea is that would make life tough for extremist candidates since with a large field, getting second-place votes would be important and extremist candidates are unlikely to get any second place votes.
Some progressives are pushing the idea because New York City uses ranked-choice primaries and Zohran Mamdani won, so ipso facto, ranked-choice primaries mean progressives win. There is some truth to that, because if two centrists are running, they could split the vote. Currently, in many states, delegates are selected by proportional representation, so if two progressive candidates are on the ballot, there could be progressive delegates pledged to two different candidates at the convention, possibly leading to floor fights. Ranked-choice voting coupled with winner-take-all-the-delegates per state would probably speed up candidate selection and result in a candidate acceptable to many party members.
The reception at the DNC has been mixed. Some members like it, but others think it would be too difficult for some voters, slow down voting, and drag the primary out for months instead of leading to a quick selection of the candidate.
Last year, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, and Oregon all had RCV initiatives on the ballot and all of them lost.
Getting a majority of the 450 DNC members on board won't be so easy. Then the hard part would begin. States run primaries, so their laws would have to be changed to accommodate them. Republicans strongly oppose RCV, so changing the election laws would be limited to states where the Democrats have the trifecta. There are 15 of them, so the movement could start there. (V)