If US congresspeople are primarily accountable to their parties (in the sense of being nominated by the parties) they will split into tribes along party lines.
In California and Washington, parties do not nominate candidates; they use a jungle primary. I haven’t examined the citation, but the Wikipedia article on Jungle primaries claims that this hasn’t caused politicians to moderate.
Possibly the incentives on the parties are more important than the incentives on
the individual candidates. We should then see a difference in issue-position
flexibility between prop rep and single-member-district systems.
3ryan_b2y
That finding does not surprise me, because parties are still the primary
mobilizers of votes and distributors of voting information. It seems to me we
shouldn't expect any countervailing influence against partisanship until one
party switches to an election strategy where they focus on expanding the
electorate and it pays off.
In California and Washington, parties do not nominate candidates; they use a jungle primary. I haven’t examined the citation, but the Wikipedia article on Jungle primaries claims that this hasn’t caused politicians to moderate.