It shouldn't come as a surprise that a party that needed 15 votes to elect a speaker in January could find itself riven by internal conflicts in 2024. Not only does the GOP face a crossroads over whether to stick with Donald Trump for a third presidential run or move on; upcoming legislative fights over the debt ceiling and government funding are almost guaranteed to stoke fires between Republican pragmatists/institutionalists and the Freedom Caucus.
One of the biggest (if not the biggest) drivers of congressional polarization in recent decades has been primary elections, and the hardcore partisan devotees they tend to attract. A decline in participation has only skewed primaries more towards this type of voter.
A new report this week by the Bipartisan Policy Center's Joshua Ferrer and Michael Thorning found that 21.3% of eligible voters cast ballots in 2022's congressional primaries (10.6% for GOP candidates and 9.3% for Democrats). That's up from 19.9% in the last midterm, 2018, and the historic low of 14.3% in 2014. But it still means small pools of partisans are selecting the vast
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