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California voters increasingly distrust both major parties. Here's why the state's Top Two primary gives independent voters more power to shape elections.
Image: Duncan Shelby on Alamy.
California Voters Don’t Like Either Party. Good Thing the Primary Doesn’t Belong to The Parties.
Jun 02, 2026
SAN DIEGO, Calif. - California voters have already received ballots for the June 2 primary, and the message they have going into these elections may not be what the political class wants to hear: They are not thrilled with either major party.
A recent analysis from the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) found that majorities of likely voters have unfavorable views of both parties—61% unfavorable toward the Democratic Party and 70% unfavorable toward the Republican Party.
There were only a quarter of respondents who said the two major parties do an adequate job representing the American people, while roughly 3-in-4 said the parties do such a poor job that a third major party is needed.
Notably, this doesn’t just mean any third party.
Third party registration in California only reaches about 5% of the electorate. This is counting the American Independent Party, which has many voters registered who did not mean to declare a party preference.
What voters want is representation that is beholden to them, not party leadership. They want candidates who prioritize the needs of the electorate, not the clamoring of shrinking party bases and monied interests aligned with the parties.
That should matter in any election. In California’s June 2 primary, it matters even more.
Unlike traditional party primaries, California’s nonpartisan primary system does not belong to the Democratic or Republican Party. For statewide offices, legislative races, and congressional contests, all candidates appear on the same ballot, and all voters can choose any candidate, regardless of party. The two candidates who receive the most votes move on to November.
In other words, California voters who are frustrated with both parties are not locked out of the process. They own the process.
This is especially true of independent voters (many of whom are registered No Party Preference in California). The campaigns like to treat them like spectators, and while there is a noticeable turnout gap, if they participated, they would become the most powerful voting bloc.
The problem is whether enough voters know that.
The word “primary” carries baggage. In many states, it means party members choosing party nominees. In California, it's not about picking party nominees but picking the top candidates, regardless of party.
The difference is party control versus voter control. And it is why California's nonpartisan primary is called a voter-nominated system.
California adopted the Top Two primary under Proposition 14 in 2010. Supporters argued that all voters should be able to choose any candidate, regardless of party, and that independent voters should have a meaningful say in the process.
At the time, 54% of voters approved the reform, which went into effect for the 2012 election cycle. More than a decade later, the system is once again at the center of political debate.
Early polling in the 2026 governor’s race raised the possibility of two Republicans advancing in California because of a crowded Democratic field. As noted on IVN, this was when a quarter of the electorate was still undecided.
Party insiders have since used anxieties around this to push for Top Two repeal.
They don’t want to upgrade the system, as the More Choice Coalition has offered to advance more candidates to November and use ranked choice ballots. They want to return to a system of party control and independent voter suppression.
As we near primary election day, polls show the odds of a two-Republican general election have all but evaporated (as we said it would).
California’s nonpartisan primary can produce outcomes party leaders don’t like. It can advance candidates who do not have the blessing of party leadership. It can also advance two candidates of the same party in a state that already leans heavily Democrat.
The question the parties don’t want voters to ask is: What is the worst that happens if two Democrats advance to November?
Democratic registration is at 45% of the electorate and PPIC has found that 40% of independents lean Democrat.
So again, what happens if two Democrats advance to the general election in the governor’s race?
The distinctions between the candidates suddenly matter more and they need to compete for broader support. Especially since the voters who choose the winner will be outside the party.
What happens if a Democrat goes up against a MAGA-aligned Republican? The Democrat wins in a landslide.
The original sponsors of California’s nonpartisan primary system assert that the point of Top Two was never that any party was entitled to a spot in November. The point was that they have to earn that spot by getting voter support.
Further, party candidates have to earn a win.
That is what it means to have a voter-nominated system. This is not a flaw to voters who are tired of partisan gatekeeping. That is the feature. And if voters look at the data, Californians have been mostly satisfied with the results.
According to PPIC:
“After the 2012 election cycle, 59% of likely voters said that Proposition 14 turned out to be ‘mostly a good thing’ for California, with similar responses in 2017 (60%), 2022 (62%), and 2024 (68%). In our most recent polling, majorities across political groups and along the political spectrum agreed.”
Party leaders really want these numbers to change.
Voting is already underway in California. Vote centers opened in Voter’s Choice Act counties on May 23, and in-person early voting locations throughout California will be open by May 30. June 2 is the final day to vote in person.
Millions of independent voters stayed home in the last gubernatorial primary. They are told they have no power and their only role is to spectate until November. However, they do not have to wait for the parties to give them permission to matter.
They already have a ballot. They already have choices. They already have the ability to shape the November election before most of the political world starts paying attention.
And in a state where voters are increasingly unhappy with both major parties, the June 2 primary may be the clearest reminder that California’s election system is not a private contest between party organizations.
It belongs to voters.
California Voters Don’t Like Either Party. Good Thing the Primary Doesn’t Belong to The Parties. was originally published by Independent Voter News and is republished with permission.
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Demonstrators hold signs during a January 6th memorial march marking five years since the attack on January 06, 2026 in Washington, DC
Win McNamee / Getty Images
America at 250: A Nation Drifting from Its Ideals—As Unchecked Power Corrupts
Jun 01, 2026
As the nation approaches its 250th Anniversary, Americans should be entering a moment of pride, reckoning, and aspiration — honoring our founding ideals, confronting our injustices, and committing to a shared, inclusive future. But millions cannot reach that place. They are living in a country where the most basic democratic promise — that no one, not even the president, is above the law — is no longer true. And they are asking a question no democracy should ever force its people to ask: How do you confront injustice when leaders erase the history, hide the evidence, excuse the wrongdoing, and protect the perpetrators?
People are watching January 6 perpetrators not only be pardoned, but now discussed as victims deserving compensation — while others who committed far lesser offenses remain in prison. They are watching families who lost loved ones, officers who were attacked, and judges who were threatened receive no acknowledgment, while those who carried out the violence are elevated. They are watching Epstein victims still seeking closure while Maxwell lives comfortably. And they are watching Congress and the courts fail to check a president who intimidates, retaliates, enriches himself, and bends institutions to serve him.
This is not a moment of national pride. It is a moment of national disorientation. People are trying to live their lives, raise their families, and hold onto hope while watching the guardrails of democracy bend in plain sight. They see a president who rewards loyalty over law, who uses public office for personal gain, who threatens opponents, and who treats institutions as tools for retribution. They see leaders in Congress who enable it, courts that hesitate to confront it, and a political culture that shrugs at behavior that would once have ended careers.
Selective accountability. Truth rewritten. History sanitized. Wrongdoing reframed as patriotism. Victims forgotten. Perpetrators elevated. This is the opposite of the ideals the nation claims to honor.
Power corrupts — not only through threats and retaliation, but through the steady misuse of public authority for personal benefit. In this administration, corruption is carried out in public view: foreign payments and business entanglements that raise emoluments concerns, political loyalty rewarded with pardons, critics targeted with state power, and federal agencies pressured to serve the interests of one individual rather than the nation. This is what happens when power goes unchecked — when institutional guardrails are weakened, ignored, or deliberately dismantled, and the public is taught to expect impunity rather than accountability.
People are not confused about what they are seeing. They are watching public power used not to uphold the law, but to protect the powerful — a reversal of the very purpose of democratic institutions. They are watching a president openly threaten political opponents, promise retribution, and use the language of vengeance.
They are watching members of Congress echo those threats, minimize violence, and elevate individuals who attacked their own workplace. They are watching courts delay rulings, narrow accountability, or avoid confronting the full scope of wrongdoing. They are watching institutions that once stood as guardrails now bend under pressure.
This is not the America people were taught to believe in. It is not the America they want to pass on to their children. And it is not the America that deserves a 250th Anniversary celebration.
That is why this anniversary demands more than celebration — it demands clarity. Anniversaries have always forced nations to confront both their ideals and their failures. Every major milestone in American history has required a reckoning with the gap between promise and practice — and this one is no different.
America’s ideals — liberty, equality, self‑government, the rule of law, the protection of rights, and the consent of the governed — have always defined who we claim to be. Yet those ideals are drifting out of reach.
The Semiquincentennial is supposed to be a moment of reflection — a chance to embrace those ideals, honor where we’ve been, measure where we are, and imagine where we’re going. But reflection requires honesty. It requires confronting the truth, not burying it. It requires acknowledging harm, not excusing it. It requires accountability, not avoidance.
Those ideals are being reversed. Unchecked power corrupts by punishing those who speak out, rewarding those who stay silent, and bending institutions away from the public good. This is how a nation drifts from its ideals: when truth becomes optional, accountability becomes selective, and the Constitution becomes secondary to the ambitions of one individual.
When power goes unchecked, the burden always falls on ordinary people. Millions of Americans are not refusing to celebrate out of cynicism. They are refusing because celebration without accountability is not patriotism — it is denial. They understand that a nation cannot move forward if it refuses to confront what it has become. They understand that justice cannot function when power shields itself from consequence. And they understand something else: A country that cannot tell the truth about its past or its present cannot shape a just future.
Families who lost loved ones on January 6 still wait for acknowledgment. Officers who defended the Capitol still carry physical and emotional scars. Judges and election workers still face threats. Survivors of sexual exploitation still wait for justice. Meanwhile, those with power and proximity to power are shielded, protected, or rewarded.
Those who upheld their duty are unprotected. Those who violated theirs are elevated. This is the fracture at the heart of the moment.
Fractures like this do not heal on their own. They require action — from all of us. To keep the nation from drifting further from its ideals, every part of American democracy must reclaim its role.
The people must demand transparency, reject narratives that excuse wrongdoing, and stay engaged beyond election cycles. Congress must reassert its oversight powers, enforce subpoenas, strengthen ethics laws, and restore the checks and balances the framers designed. The courts must apply the law consistently and protect judicial independence, ensuring that no one — not even a president — is above the law. Institutions must resist political pressure, protect whistleblowers, and uphold the principle that public office is a public trust. And the nation as a whole must confront the truth, reinforce civic education, and treat accountability not as a political weapon but as a constitutional obligation.
And the presidency itself must return to the oath it demands — to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. That oath is not symbolic; it is the legal boundary that restrains executive power. A president must respect the guardrails that prevent corruption: the separation of powers, the independence of the Justice Department, the prohibition against using public office for private gain, and the expectation that truth, not loyalty, guides public service. When those guardrails are ignored, weakened, or dismantled, corruption is not an accident — it is the predictable outcome of unchecked power.
So as America approaches this milestone, the question is not whether people should celebrate. The question is whether the nation’s leaders will honor the principles they swore to uphold.
Whether they will restore the promise that has been broken. Whether they will show the courage to confront wrongdoing, even when it comes from within their own ranks. Whether they will choose the Constitution over convenience, the rule of law over loyalty, and the country over themselves.
And until accountability returns — not as a slogan but as a constitutional obligation — millions of Americans will remain unable to celebrate a nation that refuses to confront what it has become or honor the future it still claims to promise.
Carolyn Goode is a retired educational leader and national advocate for ethical leadership, civic literacy, and government accountability. She writes about democratic principles, institutional integrity, and the responsibilities of citizenship in a constitutional republic.Keep ReadingShow less
Pluralism has a messaging problem. Explore how body metaphors shape politics, exclusion, diversity, and democratic governance across difference.
Malte Mueller / Getty Images
We Need a New Metaphor of Us
Jun 01, 2026
Pluralism has a messaging problem. Part of the reason why is that there is no common emotionally intuitive metaphor for the collaborative co-creation of governance across differences that is a pluralistic democracy.
This matters because humans do not think politically through abstract principles alone — we think through metaphor.
While I am constitutionally optimistic, this last challenge of messaging around pluralism is a sticky one. And recently, I had an “aha” moment that helped me understand a little bit better why that is, and what pluralists can do to improve their messaging.
The most common metaphor for “us” is structurally incapable of holding both the diversity of pluralism and the co-creation of governance of a democracy because it defaults either to purity or hierarchy.
We need different metaphors. Here, I’ll walk us through the most common metaphor and how it fails us, why metaphors are so important, and offer my hot take on a few of the best candidates for our shared messaging problem.
The Body is Us
The human body is the oldest, most universal, and most influential metaphor for a social group. The image of the body is helpful in defining community because its skin defines in or out, and knowledge of it and a basic visceral understanding of it as a collection of parts is a universal part of our human, bodily existence.
In the language of linguists, the “social body” is a root metaphor that allows the speaker and audience together to develop a shared, nuanced understanding of the complicated reality of social groups.
The social body can be healthy, be ill, have headship, working members, and functioning organs; all of which means that each individual in a social body is affected as well.
While most folks wouldn’t recognize the phrase “the social body,” pretty much everyone recognizes the “body politic” or “the Body of Christ.”
These “body politic” and “body of Christ” phrases stem from the Greco-Roman political tradition and early Christian traditions. Body metaphors are also endemic to South Asian Hindu traditions and East Asian Confucian traditions. So, the social body metaphor has both shaped and become ingrained in everyday language over thousands of years, shaping—and limiting—our very sense of what it means to belong.
Why This Metaphor Matters
The science of cognitive linguistics tells us that metaphors are what enable wee human brains to make sense of the overwhelming quantity of information coming at us all the time. We really can’t process it all.
Metaphors allow us to “carry over” meaning from one thing to another, helping us understand complex ideas by giving them a familiar shape. I want to stay with metaphors for the moment.
Some metaphors are simple ideas that have lots of ways to call them to mind, and sometimes they become so embedded that we stop noticing them.
That’s important to know because metaphors structure our internal reality. Once we use a metaphor to describe a situation, we then perceive the situation through that lens and act based on that, instead of on the objective situation.
Take “time is money.” We talk about spending, saving, wasting, or investing time—even though time isn’t a material resource. But because the metaphor is so ingrained, it shapes how we behave.
Or “argument is war.” We say:
- “He shot down my argument.”
- “Her critique hit the target.”
Once that “war” idea is activated, we’re more likely to escalate, defend, attack.
So metaphors don’t just help us understand our reality, they create and limit our perceptions of it.
So if the body metaphor shapes and limits our expectations for our society, if it can’t speak to pluralistic governance, it undermines pluralistic governance.
Perhaps the most powerful aspect of the body metaphor is that it helps us understand very quickly who is in, who is out, and what to do with those who don’t quite fit. That means that the body metaphors we use actually shape social policy and social expectations for belonging and exclusion. That’s a big deal to pluralists.
Exactly how the metaphor shapes exclusionary social policy today is a topic I explored in this paper for the Center for Faith, Identity, and Globalization. Check that out if you’re interested in the mechanics and realities of exclusion and control.
Here, I want to focus on one main issue. The social body has never developed metaphors that describe the collaborative cocreation of governance across difference.
Therefore, its universality means we are fighting a difficult messaging battle, and we cannot use this profoundly influential metaphor in our own language.
Control and Expulsion are Not What We’re Going For
The social body helps people intuitively and emotionally to understand what kind of difference is acceptable and what to do with what doesn’t fit. But the social body tends to resolve difference in only two recurring ways: control or expulsion. In other words, body metaphors naturally convert disagreement about the common good into the illnesses of disobedience or contamination.
A social body can be wildly diverse, but it manages that diversity with hierarchical control.
The Roman Empire is a good example. The empire was astoundingly diverse in language, culture, and religious ideas, and emperors didn’t much care what your identities were. But they did consider failure to pay taxes or follow imperial orders a real sickness in the body. They dealt with that by trying first to “heal the sickness” and control the misbehavior before expulsion. But any hint of rebellion against the empire meant immediate removal, or “amputation of the gangrenous limb.”
On the other hand, a social body can manage diversity by limiting it with strict purity rules.
Christian communities of the first and second centuries are good examples. The Apostle Paul, an educated Greek Jew, used the body metaphor to describe the Christian community like this: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.” (1 Cor:12)
Deeply concerned with living and believing right, early Christians jettisoned some of the hierarchical expectations of Roman society (“in Christ there is neither slave nor free” Gal 3:28) and developed collaborative lay leadership. However, Paul’s insistence that “a little yeast leavens a whole loaf” (Gal 5:9) justified the rapid excommunication of those who failed to keep to the standards because one sinner could contaminate the whole. Christian group purity became an enduring theme, along with exile, excommunication, accusations of heresy, and unending amounts of personal hurt.
Neither of these versions of the body is capable of explaining or structuring the collaborative cocreation of governance across difference.
The problem is that these are the two ways that the body metaphor structures diversity. And because the body metaphor is sooooo deeply ingrained in English and in many religious traditions – with very similar patterns of hierarchy or purity – I think that’s one reason that pluralistic messaging is just so hard.
Our most common metaphor for society is just not capable of managing diversity without reliance on a strict hierarchy. And humans absolutely need metaphors to help us process our immensely complex environments.
Boo for pluralists.
Allison K. Ralph is Founder and Principal at Cohesion Strategy.
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white concrete building during daytime
Photo by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash
The Fragile Coalitions Beneath American Politics
Jun 01, 2026
Part 1 of “Today’s Governing Gap,” a three-part series on coalition fragility, governing coherence, and the institutional continuity democratic systems require.
American politics looks stable from a distance. Two dominant parties, fiercely competitive elections, a constitutional framework that has held since the Civil War.
But political systems do not become unstable only when governments collapse or constitutions fail. The instability begins inside the coalitions.
Most accounts of today's politics describe a country deeply polarized. The deeper question may be whether the alliances holding today's parties together can remain durable over time.
American history suggests political coalitions are rarely permanent. They are assembled around the pressures, conflicts, and priorities of a particular era. As those pressures evolve, coalitions eventually shift with them. The process is often difficult to recognize while it is happening.
In 1854, the Whig Party was still one of the country's two dominant political coalitions. Six years later, it had effectively disappeared. The Republican Party, formed largely in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the expansion of slavery into western territories, rapidly displaced the collapsing Whigs as the dominant opposition force in the North.
Eric Foner's study of Republican ideology before the Civil War shows how former Whigs, anti-slavery Democrats, Free Soilers, and other factions reorganized around a new political alignment built on the idea of “free soil, free labor, free men.” The Whig collapse showed how quickly a nationally established coalition can lose the ability to contain its internal pressures.
American politics has passed through similar periods since.
The New Deal coalition assembled by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s united labor unions, urban political machines, immigrants, Southern whites, Black voters, and reform-oriented liberals inside a single governing structure. It became one of the most durable political coalitions in modern American history.
But it was never fixed. The coalition contained deep disagreements over race, federal power, labor rights, religion, regional identity, and the role of government. Those tensions were managed for decades because the coalition's factions still saw enough shared political interest to remain together. Eventually, those tensions broke the coalition apart.
The civil rights movement exposed conflicts inside the Democratic coalition that could no longer be contained within the existing structure. One of my clearest political memories is Lyndon Johnson's decision to push the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress, knowing it would fracture the Democratic coalition that had dominated national politics since the New Deal. The political cost became visible almost immediately. That fall, Barry Goldwater, who opposed the Civil Rights Act, carried five Deep South states that had voted Democratic for generations.
The broader realignment took longer to unfold, but the direction was already visible. The old coalition was beginning to reorganize underneath the existing political system.
Political institutions often appear more stable than the coalitions supporting them. Parties can continue contesting elections long after the social and ideological alliances inside them begin to weaken or reorganize.
Political scientist V. O. Key Jr.'s theory of critical elections and Walter Dean Burnham's work on American realignments both examined how political systems periodically reorganize in response to new pressures and conflicts. Coalitions weaken gradually beneath stable-looking institutions, and political change tends to become visible only after the underlying realignment is well underway.
Today's political environment shows signs of this strain.
A 2024 Pew Research Center study of changing partisan coalitions found that the coalitions within both parties have changed substantially since the 1990s. Educational polarization has widened. Religious and geographic sorting have intensified. White voters without college degrees have moved sharply toward Republicans, while college-educated suburban voters have become more Democratic. The parties draw support from distinct social, cultural, and educational worlds.
Political scientist Lilliana Mason's work on social sorting and identity polarization argues that partisan identity now overlaps more closely with race, religion, geography, education, and culture, making political disagreement feel tied to social identity itself.
The Republican and Democratic coalitions each contain factions whose priorities diverge on culture, markets, globalization, public order, foreign policy, and the role of government. Older ideological categories no longer adequately describe them.
These tensions do not necessarily signal the collapse of the two-party system or the imminent rise of a third party. American electoral rules strongly reinforce the existing structure. Democrats and Republicans remain electorally competitive and institutionally dominant.
But electoral stability and coalition stability are not the same thing. A political system can remain formally intact while the coalitions inside it become more fragile and harder to adapt to changing political pressures.
Political systems often appear stable until the coalitions underneath them stop holding together.
The next essay turns to what binds coalitions together when shared governing priorities give way to shared opposition.
Edward Saltzberg is the Executive Director of the Security and Sustainability Forum and writes The Stability Brief.
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