Ha true true <| sep |> I wouldn ' t say eliminate . They do reduce it , but primaries still fall into the firstpastthepost voting flaws , such as the spoiler effect . That ' s part of the reason why Hillary lost Iowa to Obama in 2008 the vote was split three ways . The clowncar opening of the Republican primary could have contributed to Donald Trump winning it . Also , the Democratic primary ' s fairness doesn ' t reflect the reality of the electoral college . Looking at 2016 ' s political map , IMO primaries held in places like Texas , California , and Louisiana should hold little delegate weight compared to ones held in Ohio and Michigan . At least until we decide a president by popular vote it didn ' t help Hillary to have the most voters , she needed more voters in the right states . As we saw with Bernie , a number of established Democrats who considered him a nonDemocrat felt animosity towards him for running in the Democrat ' s primary . Remember him being attacked for not being a real Democrat ? Bernie just didn ' t want to be a spoiler in the general election , which he likely would do Gary Johnson and Jill Stein pulled in an impressive amount of votes , often achieving amounts far larger than the difference between Trump and Clinton in key states , and based on that Sanders is closer to Hillary than Trump on key issues , it ' s likely he could have taken a number of votes from Hillary , and many swing states have razorthin margins asis .