Would Independents Have Changed D.C.'s Election? Probably Not, Experts Say

In the lead up to last week’s election, many Janeese Lewis George detractors repeated a common refrain: If D.C. allowed independents to vote in Democratic primaries, the democratic socialist wouldn’t have a chance.

Nearly 89,000 D.C. voters are not registered with a political party, according to data from the Board of Elections, and therefore were unable to vote in last week’s Democratic primary – the only election that, in deeply-blue D.C., really matters. They account for more than 18% of the District’s electorate and constitute the second largest political contingent in the city, far outnumbering registered Republicans.

But would their inclusion have altered the outcome? Probably not. Political strategists and historians agree: The size of Lewis George’s resounding win would have made it nearly impossible for D.C.’s independents to flip the results.

“Given the landslide victory that Janeese was able to orchestrate, it probably would have just made things closer,” said Chuck Thies, a political consultant who supported McDuffie.

Tom Lindenfeld, a strategist who worked for Robert White’s successful congressional campaign, said the assumption that District independents are all moderates is also wrong. There are two primary groups of independent voters in D.C., he said: young people who tend to be progressive but feel disillusioned with the two-party system, and moderates who tend to lean conservative. Including them would not have significantly changed the outcome of last week’s election, Lindenfeld said.

But that’s not to say that proponents or opponents of opening up the primaries have decided to bury the hatchet. District voters overwhelmingly approved so-called semi-open primaries in a 2024 referendum. It hasn’t gone into effect because the D.C. Council withheld funding last year. The council could vote on whether to fund it again as early as today.

At the crux of the issue lies a fiery debate about voting rights and partisan politics, trying to find the balance between including the growing number of voters disillusioned with the party system while also safeguarding a party’s right to select its own nominee.

A recent CNN poll found that 47% of the population identifies as politically independent, a figure that has grown 10 points since President Donald Trump’s first term. And in D.C., a disproportionately large number of people have politically sensitive jobs and may not want to publicly signal their politics by registering with a party.

Proponents of D.C.’s current system, like Lindenfeld, say non-Democrats shouldn’t get a say in the Democratic nominee. Plus, Lindenfeld said, nothing is stopping voters from registering with the party.

But advocates of including independents in the primary say that in an essentially one-party city like D.C., closing off the only consequential election amounts to voter suppression.

“Let’s think about some of the other fundamental rights we enjoy as Americans: freedom of the press, freedom of speech, 2nd amendment rights,” said Lisa Rice, co-founder and CEO of Grow Democracy DC, a nonprofit advocating for ranked-choice voting and “semi-open” primaries. “In order to exercise these rights, they don’t require us to be part of a private club.”

D.C. voters have signaled where they stand. In 2024, 73 percent of the electorate voted in favor of Initiative 83, which established ranked-choice voting and a “semi-open primary system” allowing unaffiliated voters to participate in a party’s primary election.

Last year, the D.C. Council decided to fund just the ranked-choice voting half of the initiative, effectively blocking the second half from taking effect. Councilmember Brooke Pinto, who unsuccessfully ran for D.C. delegate, proposed an amendment to the budget to include independents, calling it the “clear will of the voters.” Robert White, her council colleague who bested her in the race for D.C. delegate, voted against funding the “semi-open” primary, as did mayoral candidate Kenyan McDuffie. Democratic mayoral nominee Janeese Lewis George voted present, abstaining from weighing in.

“What a blunder,” said Thies when he heard that McDuffie had voted against including independents. Thies, who believes the average independent in D.C. falls ideologically to the right of the average Lewis George voter, thinks including them still might have changed the dynamics of the race.

It’s also the principle, Thies said.

“Elected officials in D.C. will talk themselves until they’re blue in the face about voting rights but will have no compunction at all about overturning the will of the voters.”

Critics of allowing unaffiliated voters to cast ballots in party primaries fear that bad-faith operatives could purposefully vote for a weak candidate as the party nominee, setting up the opposing party for a victory in the general election. Thies said this is a valid fear in most of the country, but not in D.C., where the general election tends to be more of a formality than genuine contest.

Lindenfeld is a staunch opponent of “open” primaries and takes issue with the language calling primaries “open” or “closed” – it would be more accurate to call them “meddling” or “non-meddling,” he said. The Democratic nominee should be elected by Democrats, he said, and people who want a say should register with the party.

“If someone wants to register as an independent, that’s totally fine,” Lindenfeld said. “But don’t pretend to be a Democrat.”

Of the young idealists among the independents, he said: “People who are young and out of the party structures might at some point become more pragmatic to be able to influence policies and outcomes of elections.”

And of the moderate block, he added: “I don’t believe in bending over backward for people who don’t really care that much.”

Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University, said historical precedent validates the fears Lindenfeld and others may have around allowing nonpartisans to vote in primaries. But the council’s vote to block the “semi-open” primary after nearly three-fourths of the electorate voted in favor represents a “slap in the face to Washington voters.”

“With no vote in Congress, with not having Statehood, with not having franchise, I would think the principle of wanting to extend a say to every voter in the city would be compelling,” Dallek said.

Former mayoral candidate Rini Sampath on Monday publicly voiced her support for including independents in the primary and urged people to contact their council members ahead of their budget meeting. In a social media post, she noted that funding the “semi-open” primary would cost just over $1 million in a roughly $22 billion budget.

“This is not a question of whether DC can afford it,” she said in a post on X. “It is a question of whether the Council will honor the will of the people.”