Parties and Electoral Reform: Insights from Political Operatives

What It Is: A July 2026 report based on 12 in-depth interviews with Republican and Democratic political operatives (analyzed via qualitative coding), examining how party insiders actually view their role in primaries and which electoral reforms they believe would or wouldn't strengthen political parties. 

Why It Matters: The findings are concrete and counterintuitive: every operative interviewed said party organizations exist to win elections, not to shape ideology, and most were skeptical that reforms like ranked-choice voting or nonpartisan primaries would meaningfully improve trust — favoring instead reforms that strengthen parties' own fundraising and organizing capacity. That's directly useful for Legitimacy-focused conversations about electoral reform, grounding them in how the system actually operates rather than how reformers assume it operates. 

How to Use It: Use as a primer before your government-affairs or corporate PAC team engages with any electoral-reform-adjacent policy conversation in the states where you operate, to understand how party insiders themselves are likely to respond to proposed changes.