At Swing State Project, DavidNYC has a cool chart showing the 31 times so far this cycle when an incumbent member of the House of Representatives faced a serious primary challenge (‘serious,” for the purposes of this post, is defined as the incumbent not receiving 30% or more of the vote).
The chart shows incumbent Republicans facing 19 serious primary challenges, and incumbent Democrats facing 12. On average, incumbent Republicans received 57% of the vote in their primaries, while incumbent Democrats received 62%.
However, the Democratic primary challenges to Alan Mollohan, Danny Davis, and Shelia Jackson-Lee were definitely not challenges from the left. If those are removed from the Democratic totals, then so far there have nine serious progressive primary challenges, averaging 37% of the vote.
Overall, this means that right-wing primary challenges outnumber left-wing primary challenges by a little more than 2-1, and are performing 6% better in those primary challenges.
Granted, even before the emergence of the tea party, it is not exactly breaking news that incumbent Republicans face far more serious primary threats than incumbent Democrats. However, actually seeing it quantified in this way is quite enlightening.
Whether you take this as a sign that conservatives are doing a better job of putting together insurgent campaigns to hold their party accountable, or that conservatives are far more to blame for polarization than Democrats, is probably a matter of taste. Both are actually true, so whichever lesson you decide to draw will be correct.
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