When candidates drop out — and still collect votes
The 2022 primary season was a pivotal one for Senate and gubernatorial races. But one of the lesser-noticed reasons it was notable was for having an unusually large number of primaries in which major candidates dropped out of a race too late to be taken off the ballot — and proceeded to receive a significant number of votes.
I found five such examples in 2022, in such hotly contested presidential states as Arizona, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
In two cases — the gubernatorial races in Arizona and Pennsylvania — Republican candidates quit the race as a tactical gambit, hoping to head off a victory by an election-denying candidate aligned with former President Donald Trump. These candidates dropped out in order to narrow the field and unify the opposition to the Trump-aligned candidate, who they feared could not win a general election. But in both states, it wasn’t enough: Kari Lake won the nomination in Arizona and Doug Mastriano won it in Pennsylvania.
In the other three examples — the gubernatorial and Senate race in Wisconsin and the gubernatorial race in Massachusetts — candidates quit the primary for a more prosaic reason. They decided they were unlikely to win.
In all five primaries, the candidates who quit the race missed the deadline for removing themselves from the ballot, enabling voters — including early voters, an increasing share of the electorate — to choose them.
In no case did a departed candidate win more votes than the difference between the two finishers. But in two cases, these candidates came fairly close, and in the others, they won between 80,000 and 106,000 votes, a nontrivial amount.
Here’s a rundown.
Races where former candidates accounted for a large share of the winning margin
2022 Republican gubernatorial primary, Arizona
Former Rep. Matt Salmon dropped out of the GOP gubernatorial primary on June 28, a full 35 days before the Aug. 2 primary. He still won 30,659 votes, or 3.7%.
Lake ended up defeating her closest competitor, Karrin Taylor Robson, 48%-43%, or 39,772 votes. That was larger than Salmon’s total, but Salmon came pretty close to equaling that gap: His take accounted for 77% of the winning margin.
2022 Republican gubernatorial primary, Wisconsin
Facing growing odds of winning the nomination to take on Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, Republican Kevin Nicholson dropped out of the primary on July 5, or 35 days before the Aug. 9 primary. He ended up winning 24,884 votes, or 3.59%.
The winner was businessman Tim Michels, who defeated former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, 47%-42%, a margin of 35,585 votes. Nicholson’s total accounted for about 70% of Michels’ winning margin.
Races where a candidate dropped out but still recorded a large raw number of votes
2022 Democratic gubernatorial primary, Massachusetts
Democratic Attorney General Maura Healey was always considered the frontrunner for the nomination to succeed, and after she entered the race, state Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz got out. That was on June 23, a full 75 days before the Sept. 6 primary.
Chang-Diaz still won 106,527 votes, or 14.4%. She trailed Healey with 633,156 votes, but it still represented a significant haul for someone who had been out of the race for two and a half months.
2022 Republican Senate primary, Wisconsin
In the two weeks before the Aug. 9 primary, no fewer than three Democrats quit the contest to take on GOP Sen. Ron Johnson.
As Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes consolidated support, the three other Democrats saw the writing on the wall.
The first to leave was Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson, who dropped out 15 days ahead of the primary, His departure was followed over the next four days by those of businessman Alex Lasry and state Treasurer Sarah Godlewski.
Barnes ended up winning 390,279 votes, or 77.78%.
Nelson won 10,995 votes (2.19%), while Lasry won 44,609 votes (8.89%) and Godlewski won 40,555 votes (8.08%). Collectively, the three candidates won 96,159 votes, or 19.16% of the total.
2022 Republican gubernatorial primary, Pennsylvania
Amid (prescient) worries among top Pennsylvania Republicans that Mastriano could win the GOP primary but lose the general election, two candidates backed out of the GOP gubernatorial primary in the five days before the May 17 election, hoping to concentrate the anti-Mastriano vote.
Then-Senate President Jake Corman dropped out five days before the primary, while former Rep. Melissa Hart left the field four days out. Corman ended up winning 26,091 votes, or 1.93%, while Hart won 54,752, or 4.06%.
Combined, Corman and Hart took 80,843 votes, or just under 6%. That was smaller than the 317,988 votes separating Mastriano and the second place finisher, former Rep. Lou Barletta. But again, it was still a substantial number.
So has any former candidate won more votes than the difference between the first- and second-place finishers?
Possibly.
The best example goes back to the 2014 gubernatorial general election in Maine. In that contest, Republican Gov. Paul LePage was challenged by Democrat Mike Michaud — and by independent candidate Eliot Cutler.
A week before the Nov. 4 election, Cutler backed out — sort of.
He said, “People who feel compelled by their fears or by their conscience to vote for someone other than me, and who have supported me to date, should do so. And people who feel compelled by their conscience, probably not by their fears, to vote for me should do so, and I’m not backing down.”
Cutler ended up with 51,515 votes, or 8.4%. That was greater than the 29,405-vote difference between LePage and Michaud.
Did I miss any examples? Let me know.
