In 2022, there were many complaints about political parties not running a candidate in every race. And that is a very valid criticism – everyone should have someone to vote for & it harkens back to the Wayne Gretzky saying, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
However, the plan of running just one candidate for the AZ House of Representatives, instead of two, is actually an example of strategic thinking that can help a political party pick up a seat in the AZ House when they are the underdog in a legislative district.
As background information, there are 30 legislative districts in Arizona for both the State Senate and the State House of Representatives. Every district elects one state Senator and TWO Representatives. In the election for the House Representatives, voters may vote for up to two candidates.
Sometimes a party chooses to have only one candidate run for the AZ House instead of two. Why would they do that? The idea is – if the prior voting history in the district favors the other party, but only by a slim margin, running only one candidate may allow that person to take 2nd place; thus, winning that party the second House seat in the legislative district.
How can this work if voters are voting for two candidates? The answer is that it only works if the candidate can convince all the voters from their party to only vote for them, e.g., only vote for the one candidate from their party. Thus, the mantra of “One and Done”.
As an example, assume there are 1000 voters in a district (just to make the math easy). Of these, 400 are Republicans (R), 350 are Democrats (D), and 250 are Independents (I). Voters are instructed on the ballot that they can vote for up to 2 House candidates.
The Democrats are running 1 D candidate and the Republicans are running 2 R candidates. No Independents are running. In this scenario, the Democrats are the ones going for the 1-candidate strategy.
Now, on election day, assume all Republican voters vote for the 2 Rs – so they each have 400 votes. And all the Democrats vote for only their 1 D candidate, who has 350 votes. The hope for the Democrats is then that even if the Independent voters vote for the more popular or well-known R candidate, the D candidate will still get more Independent votes than the 2nd R candidate. Because the Democratic voters only voted for the D candidate and didn’t give any votes to the R candidates, this scenario would push the single-shot candidate into 2nd place.
In concrete terms, the voting breakdown based on the above scenario and assuming 200 independents vote for both the R1 candidate and the D candidate in our example would be:
- R1 candidate: 400 R votes + 250 I votes = 650 total = 1st place
- R2 candidate: 400 R votes + 50 I votes = 450 total
- D candidate: 350 D votes + 200 I votes = 550 total = 2nd place
So, the legislative district would then have 1 R and 1 D representative during the next legislative session – which seems reasonable since the district was close to a 50:50 breakdown between the 2 parties.
So, while fielding a candidate for every race is a good demonstration of a party’s strength, running only a single candidate for the AZ House in a legislative district where the party is the underdog by less than a 10% spread is evidence of strategic thinking by the party’s leadership. Of course, the trick is then to make sure their core base is well-informed enough to only vote for the one candidate and to convince independents to split their vote between a Democrat and a Republican.
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