My name is Nick Korasnidi, and I'm a national political reporter here at the New York Times.
Ever since October of the general election,
I've been obsessed with these findings in multiple polls that the vast majority of Americans are dissatisfied with our way of government and our politics.
The country is formed on the idea that voters would be able to have representatives who represent their interests advocating for different laws
or policies.
So after decades of gerrymandering and political polarization,
is the promise of representational democracy still holding true?
My colleague Michael Wines and I thought one of the ways we could shed some light on this is look at how many elections in 2024 for state legislators
and for members of Congress were actually competitive.
And I'm about to read you the story of exactly what we found.
And it was just shocking.
So this story required us to build a database of primary voting data.
So for about two weeks, I just sat with the vast trove of New York Times election data.
I study, you know, voting data all the time.
And there were two things that I reran the numbers.
Cause I kind of couldn't believe that, like, this was actually what the data showed.
The first was that 80% of state legislative primaries were uncontested.
And to run for especially a lower chamber of a state legislature is not a big money endeavor.
So to see so many people say it's not even worth it just shows
either how uncompetitive their districts are and the power of incumbency.