Elections, Primary

Primary elections—or preliminary, earlier elections—can come first both in order and in importance. They come first in order because selecting candidates is one of the first things that political parties must do before an election. They can be first in importance as well because those who are eventually elected to office are the successful candidates whom the parties previously selected; and they are the ones who will determine what the party, the parliament, and the country's politics will look like until the next elections.

In the study of preliminary elections, the unit of analysis is the single party in a particular country at a specific time. There are very few established de moc racies where the legal system specifies criteria for candidate selection—for example, Finland, Germany, New Zealand, and Norway (until 2002)—and only in the United States does the legal system extensively regulate the primary elections. Preliminary elections, or candidate selection methods, are thus the nonstandardized and predominantly unregimented party mechanisms by which political parties choose their candidates for general elections. The result of this process is the designation of a candidate, or list of candidates, as the candidate(s) of the party. The party then becomes effectively committed to the candidate(s) and to mobilizing its strength behind the chosen candidate(s).

This entry delineates the most important distinguishing variable for explaining how political parties choose their candidates—the selectorate, that is, who is allowed to take part in the selection of the candidates. Along with another important variable, that of candidacy requirements, these two criteria are akin to the supply and demand sides of candidate selection. While candidacy narrows the supply of contestants who can be selected, it is the selectorate that decides who will eventually face the voters in the general election. Due to the scope of its political consequences, the selectorate is the most significant and far-reaching explanatory variable when it comes to primary elections.

The selectorate continuum starts with the most inclusive body—all voters—and ends with the most exclusive one—the single leader. Each part of the continuum, and the variations along it, is illustrated by empirical examples from both established and new democracies. This entry begins by focusing on the well-known case of primary elections in the United States, which reflect the most inclusive of selectorates. It then expands to cover other democracies and their use of preliminary elections. The entry concludes with a short analysis of the political consequences of different selectorates.

Figure 1 Party Selectorates in Primary Elections