Primary Election

I

Introduction

Primary Election, preliminary election in which voters select a political party’s candidates for public office. Primary election winners from each political party compete in a general election to determine who will hold the public office. Because each party’s nominees are chosen by the public rather than by party leaders, primary elections are generally considered more democratic than other methods. In the United States, primary elections serve to nominate candidates for many local, state, and national offices, and they play an important role in selecting candidates for the presidency. Few other nations use primaries.

State political parties that do not use primary elections may instead select candidates through the caucus system. A caucus is a meeting of party members at which the party conducts its business, discusses policies, and chooses delegates to higher-level party conventions. Most caucus nominating systems begin with small meetings of party members in a precinct, the smallest electoral district within a county. For example, in the Iowa caucus system, more than 2,000 precincts hold caucuses on the same day. Precinct caucus participants in each party indicate their preference for a candidate. These preferences guide the selection of delegates to county, district, state, and national party conventions, where the party’s candidate is actually chosen.

II

The Influence of Primary Elections

Primaries have greatly changed the character of elections in the United States. Before primaries were widely adopted in the 20th century, powerful state and local party leaders—the so-called political bosses—controlled the selection of nominees at political conventions. The bosses had the power to select delegates to the convention, so they could extract political favors from candidates in exchange for ensuring that delegates would support the candidate. Primary elections reduce the power of party leaders by allowing voters to select nominees directly. The primary system also offers lesser-known candidates a better chance of winning elections than do other nominating systems. In regions or states where one political party dominates, primaries may hold more importance than the general election.

Candidates in a primary election, except those who run unopposed, campaign against candidates from their own party. The primary system thus encourages prospective nominees to publicly oppose the views of competing candidates and focuses attention on the individual candidates instead of the unity of the party.

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Critics have pointed out a number of weaknesses in the primary system. One criticism is that primaries place an additional burden on voters, who usually must choose among numerous candidates for the various offices without the guidance of any official endorsement of the party leadership. Another criticism is that primaries have considerably increased the length and expense of political campaigns, since candidates must campaign for and win both the primary election and the general election. In the United States, campaigns typically last many months. In other nations, such as the United Kingdom, campaigns are much shorter, often only a matter of weeks.

Finally, although the primary election has curbed the worst excesses of political bosses and so-called political machines, it has also weakened state party organizations by barring them from performing one of their most powerful functions—the preliminary screening of candidates. Interest groups, business and labor organizations, and the press to some extent have taken over the functions formerly performed by the party leaders.

III

Types of Primaries

Primary elections differ depending upon the law in the state in which the election is being held. The most common form is the closed primary, in which voters must be registered members of the political party or declare their party affiliation before they are allowed to vote in that party’s primary election. Voters may participate in a different party’s primary in subsequent elections if they change their party registration. About 40 of the 50 states use closed primaries. Other states use open primaries, in which any voter can vote in any party’s primary. Voters are given the ballots of all parties and select the party ballot on which they wish to vote in the secrecy of the voting booth. Having selected the ballot of one party, however, the voter in the open primary is confined to the candidates of that party and cannot vote for candidates of an opposing party. A few states use the blanket primary. In this type of primary, the names of all candidates of all parties are printed on a single ballot, and the voter may vote for a candidate for each office, crossing party lines at will.

Nonpartisan primaries are preliminary elections in which candidates are listed on the ballot without mention of political affiliation. The two candidates who receive the highest number of votes face each other in the general election. In some states, however, any candidate who receives a majority of all votes cast in the primary is declared elected. Nonpartisan primaries are often used for the selection of judges, municipal officials, school boards, and other local officials.

Primaries may be direct or indirect. In a direct primary, voters select the party’s nominee directly. Most primary elections are direct primaries. In an indirect primary, voters choose delegates who select the party’s nominee at a party convention. The indirect primary is used today in presidential contests, but rarely in races for other elected offices.

States vary in their rules governing what requirements candidates must meet to be listed on the primary ballot and whether political parties may endorse candidates before the primary. States also have different rules concerning the percentage of votes needed for a candidate to win a primary election. Some states only require that a candidate get more votes than the next leading candidate—that is, a plurality of votes. Other states require the candidate to receive a majority of votes—at least 50 percent of all votes cast—to win. In primaries that require a majority for victory, one candidate often does not capture a majority of the vote. Then the state must hold a second primary, known as a run-off primary, between the top two vote-getters.

Louisiana uses a unique variant of the open primary system for every elected office except president of the United States. In a sense, the Louisiana open primary is nonpartisan. Candidates from both parties run in the same primary election. A candidate is elected to office if he or she wins a majority of votes in the primary. Otherwise, the top two vote-getters face each other in the general election, even if they are from the same party. Because a candidate can win election in the first round, this method, despite its name, is really not a primary election at all. Rather it is a two-round general election, similar to that used in France to elect its president.

IV

Presidential Primaries

A presidential primary is used to select a party’s nominee for president of the United States. Presidential primaries differ from direct primaries. Presidential primaries are a type of indirect primary because each party’s nominee is chosen by delegates at the party’s national convention, not by popular vote. In most state presidential primaries, voters vote for the person they wish the party to nominate for president, and the election results tell the state’s delegates which candidate they are to vote for at the national convention. Because the delegates in most states are bound by the results of the primary, voters have the most important role in the nomination of presidential candidates. In another type of presidential primary, voters directly elect delegates to the national convention. The delegates are listed on the ballot as pledged to a candidate or uncommitted. Whatever system is used, national conventions today serve mainly to ratify the results of presidential primaries and caucuses.

States use various ways of allocating delegates to presidential candidates. Most states allocate delegates to candidates in proportion to the number of votes cast for the candidates in the primary. In this system, known as proportional representation, a candidate who receives 25 percent of the vote in a state primary receives 25 percent of the state’s delegates. Rules set by each political party govern the minimum percentage of votes a candidate must receive to win delegates. Other states use the winner-take-all method, in which the candidate who wins the most votes receives all of that state’s delegates.

In the United States, presidential primary elections typically take place over a period of four to six months. Each state determines the date of its own primary. The presidential primary season traditionally begins with the New Hampshire primary in February or early March and culminates with national party conventions in July or August. However, candidates’ campaigns begin as much as a year before the first primary.

Except when popular incumbent presidents seek renomination by their own party, presidential primary campaigns are hotly contested, typically attracting from 6 to 12 major candidates in each party. The earliest primaries are the most important, since they provide the first indications of a candidate’s popular support and chance of nomination. Candidates who win early primaries attract a great deal of media coverage, which usually portrays them favorably as a “winner.” They are therefore able to raise more money, recruit more supporters to work for them, and increase their standing in public opinion polls. All of these factors increase the chances that the victorious candidate will attract more voters in later primaries, both to favor their candidacy and to turn out to vote. Thus, candidates who win early primaries gain political momentum, and candidates who fare poorly often drop out of the race. Even so, as the campaign moves from state to state, leading candidates may lose and new candidates may emerge.

Many states have sought to play a greater role in the nomination process by moving their primary date earlier in the year, when candidate fortunes swing most dramatically. Many states have also aligned their primaries with those of nearby states, creating so-called regional primaries. For example, in 1988 16 states, mostly from the South, held their primaries on Tuesday, March 8, nicknamed “Super Tuesday.” The growth of regional primaries unexpectedly made campaigns more costly to run, because they required more extensive, and therefore more expensive, advertising on television and in other mass media. Regional primaries also made it harder for the little-known outsider, as Jimmy Carter was in 1976, to win the presidential nomination—although not as hard as in the days before presidential primaries.

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