Arizona House of Representatives

[Nutmeg]

Do you have a link to the article?

So it's basically a jungle primary, with all candidates from all parties on the general election ballot, and each voter chooses one candidate, and the top two are elected?

[Nutmeg]

Oh, that's a pretty terrible system.  Theoretically if there were, say, 8 members of the district's majority party running and only two members of the district's minority party, the two could win the seats with just over 20% of the total vote if all 10 candidates split the vote roughly equally.  But this is certainly better than if, say, three members were elected per district, because each additional representative elected adds exponentially to the screwiness.

In response to the original question: So a party's best strategy would be to run two candidates - no more and no less - per friendly district and one candidate - and no more - per unfriendly district, where you'd want that candidate to finish (at least) second (which is as good as first).  The tricky thing would be in a marginal district whether you'd want to run one or two candidates; it would be a gamble between going for both seats or conceding one and boosting your chances at the other.

[Nutmeg]

My understanding is that only two candidates from each party can appear on the general election ballot. The top two candidates from each party primary advance to the general election.

Oh, that does make things more fair.

Still, in unfriendly districts, a party would want to run only one candidate, regardless.