Primary Election

11 Key excerpts on "Primary Election"

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  The Promise and Challenge of Party Primary Elections

  A Comparative Perspective

  • William P. Cross, Ofer Kenig, Scott Pruysers, Gideon Rahat(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • McGill-Queen's University Press

    (Publisher)

  Despite having to go through an additional layer of competition in order to contest the general election, party candidates vastly outnumber those who are not affiliated with a political party. This is a result of the privileged position that political parties occupy in Western democracies – both inside legislatures and during election campaigns (Dalton, Farrell, and McAllister 2011). Notwithstanding the “decline of parties” thesis and the emergence of new challengers, election campaigns are still “party-centered” events (Wlezien 2009, 103). During elections, political parties are central to the discourse and debate, garner considerable media coverage, and have the tools required to run efficient and effective campaigns. Gaining access to all of these benefits (airtime, ballot access, election resources, staff, etc.) is the prize at stake for winning the primary.

  Who Votes (The Selectorate)?

  While the first two criteria are important, knowing that primaries are party-specific events that occur ahead of the general election does not tell us a great deal about the nature of the process. “Primary Election” refers to a process that involves a formal means of aggregating opinion and voting of some kind. Thus, a deliberative process that produces a candidate without a formal vote should not be counted as a primary. Similarly, a consultative survey of party members or supporters is not a primary. When scholars use the term “primary,” they mainly refer to the open, participatory, or inclusive nature of what has traditionally been an exclusively intra-party selection process. A primary reveals who is entitled to vote. In other words, the defining element of a primary has to do with the nature of the selectorate . And here we face the key question: what is the minimal degree of inclusiveness for a selection process to be regarded as a primary?

  Carey and Enten (2011, 82) observe that “Primary Elections open competition over the selection of candidates within parties beyond high party officials to voters.” This is a good start, but we need to be more specific. The term “high party officials” is rather vague: does it include delegates to a party congress? Does it include the parliamentary party group? It is also not clear what “voters” means. Does this refer to all possible voters (the electorate) or perhaps only some voters (party members, registered supporters, or both)?

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  Routledge Handbook of Primary Elections

  • Robert G. Boatright(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  When discussing Primary Elections in America years ago, political scientists typically stated that there were different types of Primary Election which could be identified. It is perhaps more accurate to say that the term “Primary Election” has several rather different meanings. Moreover, the concept is a rather elastic one because there are so few conditions that must be met for a selection process to be considered a primary, even when discussion is confined to direct primaries. Of course, a direct primary must lead directly to the nomination of a candidate who has won a formal election to be the nominee of a single party, or an alliance of several parties, or some organized group. But that election process might:

  p.37

  (a)   be mandated by law, or alternatively have been voluntarily adopted by the party; (b)   be organized and conducted by state institutions or entirely by parties themselves;

  (c)   have been preceded by earlier processes in which the candidates permitted to contest the primary were selected, or require merely that would-be nominees secure the signatures of a specified number of eligible voters;

  (d)   allow virtually anyone to vote in the primary, or alternatively restrict the vote to those meeting certain conditions – such as being a party member for a specified period; (e)   be confined solely to the purpose of selecting candidates to contest a specified public office at a general election, or be used as well to select party officials or leaders.

  Consequently, many ways of nominating candidates could count as primaries. In addition, the concept has also been hijacked to describe the first round of certain kinds of double-ballot election systems, and has been further deployed to describe selection procedures that are more inclusive than their predecessors, but which still restrict access to the selection process. If asked to answer the question “Is this particular selection procedure a Primary Election or not?” it is perhaps safest to invoke the spirit of Professor C.E.M Joad, a philosopher who appeared each week on a popular, but educational, BBC radio program in the 1940s. In answer to nearly every question under discussion in the program Joad began with the words “It all depends what you mean by . . .”.18

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  The Irony of Democracy

  An Uncommon Introduction to American Politics

  • Louis Schubert, Thomas Dye, Harmon Zeigler, , Louis Schubert, Thomas Dye, Harmon Zeigler, , Louis Schubert, Thomas Dye, Harmon Zeigler(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  However, image often triumphs over ideology: Primary voters are attracted to charismatic candidates regardless of their ideological leanings. Finally, some primary voters knowingly abandon their ideological preference to select a more moderate candidate who appears to have a better chance of winning in November, such as occurred in the Republican choice of Mitt Romney in 2012. The nomination process begins with the Iowa caucuses in January, followed by a Primary Election in New Hampshire, a tiny state that jealously guards its position as the first to hold a primary in every presidential year. New Hampshire is crucial — but only as a media event. In order to increase their importance, many states move up their presidential primaries so that most convention delegates for both parties are now chosen by mid-March. This can mean that later state primaries are largely ignored unless the election is close, such as in 2008 when the battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton raged through June. Primaries provide an opportunity for the media to separate the serious candi-dates from the aspirants. Although the primary electorate is more heavily ideologi-cal than the electorate in general elections, early primaries are usually crowded E LECTIONS , P ARTIES , AND D EMOCRACY 149 Copyright 2016 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. with candidates, who rarely develop the issues well. Vague promises of “ unity, ” “ hope, ” or “ change ” help a candidate avoid upsetting any party faction.

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  The Best Candidate

  Presidential Nomination in Polarized Times

  • Eugene D. Mazo, Michael R. Dimino(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  The party can accept this invitation, or not, as it wishes. If it does, then the party must hold the preliminary qualifying election in accordance with the rules that the government sets forth. Acceptance of this process does not mean that the candidate winning the party’s preliminary qualifying election receives the endorsement of the party as its most preferred candidate. Rather, all it means is that the winning candidate is the one who is most successful in the particular form of competition that the government has adopted as the preliminary stage for determining which candidate from that party is the one entitled to appear on the general election ballot at that ultimate stage of competition. Indeed, the party could hold an entirely separate process for determining which of its own candidates is the one it wants to endorse. (Imagine, for example, a nation deciding that its own national championship in a sport—like gymnastics or diving—would be conducted by using somewhat different rules for judging that competition than those used by the Olympics and its qualifying tournaments.) The key point is that, as long as the Olympics analogy is sound, the Primary Election is a qualifying tournament for the purpose of determining the contestants in the general election, according to what best serves the general election itself, and this is true even though each primary is confined to members of political parties. 26 For the 2020 Olympics, the international rules have been changed in a way that limits each nation’s discretion even further, in a way that has cause some consternation among some nations and athletes. Robert Johnson, Here’s How the New 2020 Olympic Qualifying Rules Would Impact the Sprints, Field Events, and Walks in the United States, LETSRUN (March 18, 2019), www.letsrun.com/news/2019/03/heres-how-the-new-2020-olympic-qualifying-rules-wou ld-impact-the-sprints-field-events-and-walks-in-the-united-states/. 96 Edward B. Foley

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  Encyclopedia of U.S. Campaigns, Elections, and Electoral Behavior

  • Kenneth F. Warren(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  670 Presidential Primaries Presidential primaries have transformed the nomi-nation process. Party organizations and leaders have lost their dominant influence on presidential nomi-nations. Together with Primary Elections for all other offices, presidential primaries give the power of politi-cal leader selection to the rank-and-file voters. In addi-tion to the voters, candidate organizations and mass media also have benefited from the presidential prima-ries. The media have not only gained a longer-running story from primaries, but also more influence over the nomination process. SEE ALSO: Iowa Caucus; New Hampshire Primary; Presiden-tial Election of 1972; Presidential Primaries. BIBLIOGRAPHY. L.M. Bartels, Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice (Princeton University Press, 1986); J.W. Davis, Presidential Primaries: Road to the White-house (Greenwood Press, 1980); J.W. Davis, U.S Presidential Primaries and the Caucus-Convention System: A Sourcebook (Greenwood Press, 1997); E.R. Gerber and R.B. Morton, “Pri-mary Election Systems and Representation,” Journal of Law, Economics and Representation (v.14/2, 1998). E SER S EKERCIOGLU S TONY B ROOK U NIVERSITY (S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK ) Primaries, State and Local Elections PRIMARIES ARE THE method by which voters nomi-nate party candidates. In the United States, primaries are used at federal, state, and local levels. Before the advent of the direct primary, the standard method of nomina-tion in the United States was through party conven-tions. In many states, each township or district elected delegates to the county convention, where delegates for congressional and state conventions were then selected. At each of these stages, delegates negotiated, bargained, and voted to make nominations. Often, the first level of this layered process, the township or district meetings, were called Primary Elections, or primaries.

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  Selecting Women, Electing Women

  Political Representation and Candidate Selection in Latin America

  • Magda Hinojosa(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Temple University Press

    (Publisher)

  It is perhaps not surprising, then, that parties in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela have all experimented with primaries, since, “For many analysts, Primary Elections are the only reform available to parties if The Paradox of Primaries 57 they really want to democratize” (Lara Rivera 2006: 16, as cited in Baldez 2007: 70). 3 Theorists may wish to debate just how democratic primaries are rela-tive to other forms of candidate selection, but it is important to recognize that we cannot be certain about how democratic so-called primaries really are in practice. This chapter presumes that the electoral contests convoked by parties are in fact true primaries, while Chapter 5 discusses some candi-date-selection methods that were cloaked as primaries but did not function as such. 4 The most common explanation for the switch to primaries is that par-ties wish to appeal to voters by increasing voter involvement and decreasing the fraud often found in convention systems (Hopkin 2001; Ware 2002). 5 Primaries can be a means of invigorating a party that is facing electoral dif-ficulties by giving it a new democratic face (Katz and Mair 1995; Hopkin 2001), which is particularly important in Latin America because of declin-ing citizen support. Primaries can also alter the internal balance of power within a party and can be a powerful means of introducing change to a polit-ical party (Hopkin 2001). Scholars have also argued that parties find prima-ries attractive because these are likely to produce more electable candidates (Serra 2011). 6 Work on Argentina demonstrates that incumbents’ ability to run for re-election and the status of the party nationally explain the use of primaries for selecting congressional candidates (De Luca, Jones, and Tula 2002).

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  American Government and Politics Today, Brief

  • Steffen Schmidt, Mack Shelley, Barbara Bardes, , Steffen Schmidt, Mack Shelley, Barbara Bardes(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Primary Elections were first organized for choosing state officials in 1904 in Wisconsin. The purpose of the primary was to open the nomination process to ordinary party members and to weaken the influence of party bosses. Until 1968, however, there were fewer than twenty Primary Elections for the presidency. They were often “beauty contests,” in which the candidates competed for popular votes but the results did not control the selection of delegates to the national convention. National conventions were meetings of the party elite—legislators, mayors, county chairpersons, and loyal party workers—who were mostly 10. McCutcheon v. FEC, 134 S.Ct. 1434 (2014). “Most of all, I want to thank the people of my district for their unflagging support and disturbingly short-term memories.” Christopher Weyant /The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank.com Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. PART TWO | THE POLITICS OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 184 appointed to their delegations. The leaders of large blocs of delegates could direct their delegates to support a favorite candidate. Reforming the Presidential Primaries In recent decades, the character of the presidential primary process and the makeup of the national convention have changed dramatically. The public, rather than party elites, now generally controls the nomination process. After the disruptive riots outside the doors of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, many party leaders pushed for serious reforms of the convention system.

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  Reforming the Presidential Nomination Process

  • Steven S. Smith, Melanie J. Springer, Steven S. Smith, Melanie J. Springer(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Brookings Institution Press

    (Publisher)

  23 A mericans have a peculiar way of selecting candidates for president of the United States. Whereas the powers of the office are laid out by the U.S. Constitution, with its checks and balances and a history of Supreme Court decisions demarcating the duties and powers of the office, the selection of can-didates is left to the individual whims of the states and political parties. And because the rules for candidate selection are not cemented in the Constitution, they have evolved and continue to change much more than the rules that govern the operation of most other aspects of American national govern-ment. As other chapters discuss, the presidential primary system has under-gone a wholesale transformation from being the purview of a relatively tight party elite to delegation of most responsibility to citizens via the direct pri-mary, with quite a few changes in the rules, timing, and who participates. This relative fluidity in the rules of our primary system makes it a target for criticism and investigation because activists, those with a stake in the out-comes of the system, and scholars seeking to understand its operation, all make the fundamental assumption that rules matter. That is, rules for selecting the parties’ nominees do a lot to determine who wins, both the nominations and the presidency. As a result, there is an enormous amount of interest in and media coverage of the horse-race aspects of the primary season. (Throughout this essay when I refer to the presidential primaries, I mean the caucuses as well, unless it is clear from the context that I intend to differentiate between caucuses and primaries.) Although personalities, gaffes, and the character of the candi-dates are the focus of both the media and probably most people during the pri-maries, there is an underlying struggle that receives less attention but which, 2 Rules and the Ideological Character of Primary Electorates gerald c. wright

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  The Presidential Election Game

  • Steven J. Brams(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • A K Peters/CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  The primacy of issues in presidential elections has been reasonably well documented over the last ten years. 4 Although most of the research that has been conducted applies to the general election, it would seem even more appli-cable to primaries, in which party affiliation is not usually a factor. Particularly in states where primaries are closed, with only registered Democrats and regis-tered Republicans eligible to participate in choosing delegates to their respec-tive conventions, it is the issue positions of the candidates running for their party’s nomination, not their party identification, that assume paramount im-portance in primaries. 5 Thus, the rule that excludes nonparty candidates from participating in a party’s presidential primary would appear to have a rather important political consequences. 6 It forces voters in a Primary Election to make choices other than on the basis of party affiliation, which is, of course, the same for all candi-dates running for their party’s nomination. To be sure, a candidate in a primary may claim that he is the only “true” representative of his party’s historical record and ideology. But by making this claim, he is not so much invoking his party label to attract votes as saying that his positions on issues more closely resemble those of his party forebears than the positions of his opponents. How can the positions of candidates on issues be represented? Start by as-suming that there is a single overriding issue in a campaign on which all can-didates must take a definite position. (Later candidates will be allowed to fuzz their positions—and thereby adopt strategies of ambiguity—as well as take po-sitions on more than one issue.) Assume also that the attitudes of party voters on this issue can be represented along a left-right continuum, which may be interpreted to measure attitudes that range from very liberal (on the left) to very conservative (on the right).

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  American Political Process

  • Alan Grant(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In 1968 presidential primaries were used by Republicans in 16 states and Democrats in 17; by 1980 this had grown to 32 and 33 respectively with three-quarters of national convention delegates selected in this way. A small number of states combined the use of primaries and caucuses. In 1996 the Republicans held 42 primaries in which 13.8 million people participated, while 8.6 million took part in the Democratic contests even though President Clinton was unopposed.

  The rules for primaries vary considerably, are complicated and forever changing, particularly in the Democratic Party. Voters elect delegates by casting ballots directly for them or by expressing a preference for a particular candidate. In some states delegates’ names appear on the ballot and are elected directly; any preference vote for a candidate is non-binding on the delegates. In closed primaries registered party voters only may participate in their party’s election. In open primaries party registration is not a factor and electors can vote in either party’s event. In other states registered party voters may only take part in their own party’s primary and independent voters can participate in either.

  As far as the allocation of delegates is concerned, the Democratic Party now insists upon proportional representation, with all candidates who reach a threshold of 15 per cent in a state obtaining a share of the delegates. The Republicans allow a greater variety of approaches. States may use a ‘winner-takes-all’ system, with the leading candidate statewide acquiring all the at-large delegates and other delegates going to the top candidate in each congressional district.

  The increasing number of primaries has led to several significant developments. Candidates are obliged to develop personal organisations in a large number of states, making them more independent of the formal party hierarchy. Primaries, therefore, tend to weaken the influence of the state party elders and ‘bosses’ and there is little or no scope for the ‘smoke-filled room’ decision-making at the party convention, as in the past. The tactic that has been used in the past, of avoiding the primaries and hoping that a deadlocked convention will allow one’s emergence as the compromise candidate, is also very unlikely to be successful. Candidates who are serious presidential contenders now have to enter the primaries at the beginning to pick up delegate support because generally one candidate builds so great a lead that he or she is impossible to stop.

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  Throwing the Party

  How the Supreme Court Puts Political Party Organizations Ahead of Voters

  • Wayne Batchis(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  76 Party Primaries and “what form of primary is best for whom?” but “who decides what form of primary is best?” and “should such a determination be made on constitutional grounds, effectively making certain political reforms out of bounds?” In the highly contested arena of structuring electoral democracy, it matters who has the final say. When the courts intervene, or fail to intervene, on behalf of a party, individual voter, or government, or itself, to determine who shall dictate the particular method of Primary Election, it is a potentially a decision of great consequence. 4.3 three constitutional rubrics If one were asked the question, which of the three components of party is most directly and profoundly impacted by the choice of primary form, a likely response would be the party in the electorate. After all, voting is where the action is for the everyday members of political parties. For the average American who is otherwise not terribly involved in politics, primary form may mean the difference between having a democratic voice and being forced onto the sidelines. When we speak of the party in the electorate, of course, we do not speak of the leaders of the party organization, involved in establishing and implementing the rules of intraparty democracy, nor the elected officials who help craft, or are constrained by, parlia- mentary procedures and administrative rules in government that allocate power and responsibility according to party affiliation. So, taking the next step, one might ask: If the U.S. Constitution plays a role at all in this context, whose constitutional rights are likely to be implicated by a choice to use one form of primary over another? Once again, as the White Primary Cases would suggest, the answer might likely be the party in the electorate.

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