Avoiding duplicative forwarding of multicast traffic is disclosed. A join message received at a first router is directed to a peer router of the first router from a first downstream node of the first router and the peer router without passing through the peer router. The join message indicates that one or more downstream nodes of the peer desire to receive from the peer multicast traffic specified in the join message. It is determined whether the join message from the first downstream node to the peer would result in duplicative forwarding by the peer of multicast traffic from an upstream source upstream of the peer and the first router based on the join message. Based at least in part on a determination that the join message would result in duplicative forwarding of the multicast traffic, an election procedure is initiated to avoid such duplicative forwarding of the multicast traffic.