Donald Trump has won big in New Hampshire. His margin of victory over his last remaining competitor, Nikki Haley, is 10% as of this writing. However, that does mean that Haley has more then 40% of the vote, which is substantial. She views this as an invitation to continue her campaign to South Carolina, the state where she was governor for two terms. There is a problem with Haley's support in New Hampshire though. As an open primary, she received 73% of her support from independent voters and only 27% from registered Republicans. Of her 130,000 votes, only around 30,000 are Republicans. CNN even aired an interview with a Democrat who voted for Haley in the primary with the goal of weakening Trump. The majority of her support was from people who don't identify as Republican! This is why primaries should be closed. Why let the other party pick your nominee or sabotage your nomination process?
Of course, both parties do it. The most famous example of this by Republicans was when Rush Limbaugh called upon his listeners to vote for Hillary in the 2008 Democratic primaries. As McCain had sown up the Republican nomination before Obama had secured the Democratic one, the opportunity was there. Rush called it Operation Chaos.
But it goes back much further. When I was a senior in high school (1985), my civics teacher explained to the class how he regularly changed his party registration in order to pick weaker candidates from the other party. Even if we had a closed primary, this method would overcome it. Still, I like this one the best. How many voters are going to regularly change registration compared to just voting in an open primary? Yeah, closed primaries would mostly resolve the issue.
Members of the party should be selecting their nominee, not members of the opposition party.
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