The Missing 3,847 Voters: Strategic Voting in a Congressional Primary

Research on strategic voting has focused on presidential and gubernatorial primary elections. We expand this literature to congressional primaries through an explanation of a voting anomaly in an Indiana Republican congressional primary. To identify strategic voting on the part of Democrats, we ask 1) if the apparent crossover voting occurred in precincts that generally support Democrat candidates and 2) whether those precincts tended to support the Democrat candidate in the general election. Lacking individual-level data, we employ an innovative research design and numerous measures to demonstrate that Democrats did crossover to support the more moderate Republican candidate. We present a counterfactual case from Georgia to support our findings that the strategic voting was a case of \u22second-best voting\u22 rather than \u22raiding.\u2