VoterForceCampaign data & field intelligence
Who loses if California ends the open primary
6.9 million Californians — 29.9% of registered voters — belong to neither major party. Under the top-two open primary, every one of them casts a ballot that counts.
That's 5.2M with no party preference plus 1.7M registered Green, Libertarian, Peace & Freedom, American Independent and the rest. Closed party primaries shut out all of them alike.
This map shows the 720 census tracts where both major parties lost registration share between Nov 2022 and Nov 2025 — voters walking away from both, not switching between them. Circles group them into 94 places.
Hover or click any shaded tract or circle. Source: UC Berkeley SWDB block-level registration (g22 and s25 files), aggregated on 2020 census blocks.
Where D and R are losing ground
Lost ground, not voters: D and R both added registrations in these tracts. Independents and third parties simply added more.
Voters a closed primary would shut out
Area ∝ the voters in those 720 tracts registered outside both major parties, grouped into 94 places. Under a closed party primary none of them gets a meaningful vote.