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In the last 25 years, Indiana Republicans have controlled a government trifecta — the state’s house, senate and governorship — for a total of 18 years. In my lifetime, a Democrat has never been governor of Indiana. Democrats have not controlled the state Senate since 1978, the year my father was born.
Indiana is a red state, but that doesn’t have to be exclusively true. Even while Republicans dominate, Democrats can still win elections. Indiana voted for Obama in the 2008 election; and in the 2023 off-year elections, six cities — representing 300,000 Hoosiers — elected Democratic mayors, replacing Republican incumbents.
In 2024, Kamala Harris received 40% of the Hoosier vote, which is representative of Democrats’ average statewide in Indiana since 2012. Still, in the 2024 primaries, 180,000 Democratic senate votes were counted against 600,000 Republican gubernatorial votes. Democrats received just 23% of the vote, paling in comparison to their federal margins.
What explains the difference? Republicans might have been more inclined to vote in a contested race, and they tend to be older, a group that is overrepresented in primaries. These are both important factors to consider, but there’s another reason that Democratic primaries are low turnout: Democrats vote in Republican primaries.
Indiana is one of 20 states that does not officially track party affiliation. As a result, any registered voter in Indiana can request a Democratic or Republican party ballot when they vote. State law technically requires voters to use the ballot of the party they voted for in the last general election, but general election ballots are secret, so this rule is rarely enforced.
I can personally attest that I have family members who have crossed party lines in the primaries. Their justification is usually some variation of:
- A Democrat will never win here, and I don’t want the extreme Republican to win.
- I want the extreme Republican to win because they’ll never win a general election.
- The Democratic primaries are uncontested, so my vote only matters if I vote Republican.
These justifications are understandable; they come from the frustration of watching Democrats lose elections time and again. But each of these arguments is flawed, and they undermine the very candidates these voters truly support.
The first argument — crossing over to stop an extreme Republican — sounds reasonable. If the choice is between a moderate and hardline Republican, why not use your vote to tip the scales toward the more palatable option?
Because it doesn't work. Studies of open primary states show that crossover voting rarely sways the ideological outcomes of the opposing party's primaries. The voters who show up to Republican primaries are, overwhelmingly, Republicans. A few thousand Democrats are unlikely to move the needle, and when they do, the moderate Republican still advances a Republican agenda. Take Brad Chambers, one of Gov. Mike Braun’s 2024 Republican primary opponents. He received support from Democrats for his opposition to Braun but still supported many of the same economic policies.
The second argument — vote for the extreme Republican because they can't win a general — has been tried before at the highest level of American politics.
In 2015 and 2016, the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee leadership actively worked to elevate Donald Trump as a preferred opponent, calculating that he would be easy to defeat. Clinton advisers sent a memo to the DNC explicitly encouraging news outlets to give air time to Trump and other far-right candidates, reasoning they were “Pied Piper” candidates who would pull the Republican field to an unappealing extreme and flop in November.
You know how that ended.
Democrats aren’t bad at political strategy; predicting “electability” is just incredibly hard. Political environments shift, and once you’ve given an extreme candidate a platform and a primary victory, they’re out of your control. The candidate you elevated in the hopes they’d lose can win; and if they do, you bear some responsibility.
That truth applies as much to Indiana’s legislative races as to presidential elections. The state representative or state senator you voted for because you were sure they’d lose in November might win. Low turnout, a national wave or unexpected scandal all have the potential to flip “surefire” elections. Now, the extremist you didn’t want is in office, and you put them there.
The third argument, that voting in uncontested Democratic primaries is pointless, is perhaps the most seductive, because it’s partially true. Democratic primaries in Indiana are often uncontested. If nobody is running against the Democratic nominee, what does your ballot accomplish?
More than you think. Primary turnout is a signal used by parties, donors and potential candidates to assess whether a district or a state is worth investing in. A Democratic primary that draws 5,000 voters sends a different message than one that draws 500. When Democratic voters abandon their own primary, they signal to the Democratic Party that the base isn’t there. Suppressed turnout discourages candidate recruitment and fundraising. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: Democrats don't vote in primaries because the races are uncontested, and the races stay uncontested because Democrats don't vote in primaries.
The six Indiana cities that elected Democratic mayors in 2023 didn't do so by accident. The Democratic Party engaged an infrastructure of candidates, volunteers, donors and voters to install those leaders. Indiana Democrats are not powerless. They proved that in 2008, when this state went blue for the first time in 44 years. For Indiana Democrats to win again, they must show up for their own party.
If you support Democrat candidates, vote in the Democratic primary — even when it's uncontested or feels symbolic. The Indiana Republican Party will sort out its own direction. Your job is to vote for the leadership you want, and that starts in the primaries.
Spencer Robinson (he/him) is a sophomore studying public policy analysis and law and public policy. His commentary can also be found on his Substack.
