Primaries

The primary election is a distinctly American phenomenon. As noted by Maurice Duverger in 1954 and Leon Epstein in 1967, the primary election proved fatal to the establishment of mass parties in the United States since it removed from parties even the power to select their own candidates—considered a fundamental party function in most general works on political parties. Thus, the American practice of selecting party candidates at all levels in a popular election of party supporters (in the very loosest sense of the term) has had profound effects on American party development and on the American system of government. In fact, probably even more than the separation of powers, the primary election is the most unique and, to foreign observers, inexplicable element of the American political system.

origins of the primary

The term "primary" appeared during the nineteenth century to signify the process of candidate selection in the major American parties. During this era of strong party organizations, candidate selection was conducted formally by party conventions and committees, but unofficially by powerful bosses who controlled the state and local party machines characteristic of nineteenth-century American politics. After the election of 1896, one or other of the major parties was so predominant in most states (the Republicans in the North and West, the Democrats even more so in the South) that party leaders effectively chose elected officials for all positions from the local to federal level. Bosses were also the key actors in the selection of the president since they controlled state delegations to both parties' national conventions.

During the Progressive Era (1900–1916) reformers strongly believed that corruption was entering the American governmental process at all levels through boss domination of candidate selection at all levels. By "buying" the party boss, powerful private interests such as railroads could effectively buy the state. When this occurred in states such as California and Wisconsin that were economically dependent on the railroads, it spawned a powerful public reaction that led to the rise of prominent reformers such as Robert LaFollette in Wisconsin and Hiram Johnson in California. LaFollete concluded that the means to break the power of the bosses and special interests over Wisconsin politics was to turn the process of candidate selection over to the people in a so-called open primary, whereby they could vote in the primary of the party of their choice. Thus, Wisconsin became the first state to pass a mandatory direct primary law in 1903.

The primary was also introduced in the southern states although as a result of somewhat less wholesome motivations. Due to the virtual one-party system established by the Democrats after Reconstruction, the incentives were similar in recognizing the need for some kind of popular participation in the electoral process, but also less noble in that a "whites-only" primary was also seen as the last line of defense against black participation in the political system (evading the Fifteenth Amendment's constitutional guarantee of the right to vote by claiming that the Democratic Party was a private association). The whites-only primary was eventually outlawed by the Supreme Court's 1944 Smith v. Allwright decision.

Given the general reformist atmosphere of the Progressive Era, the concept of the direct primary spread rapidly and had become almost universal practice for candidate selection in most states by the end of World War II (1945). Because the introduction of such primaries was a matter of state law, however, the nature of the eligible primary electorate varied greatly from state to state. Most states used a form of the primary in which only those who had registered as a Republican or Democrat could vote in that party's primary (the closed primary), a few adopted the totally open system of Wisconsin, whereas others allowed registered independents to vote in the primary election of their choosing. The southern states introduced another innovation, a second runoff primary election, if no candidate secured an outright majority of the vote in the first primary. Primaries certainly precluded the emergence of powerful party machines in the emerging South and West, but in the industrial and urban Northeast and Midwest, party machines were sufficiently powerful to organize their forces for the primary. At the presidential level, primaries were introduced in several states for choosing national convention delegates but they were not regarded as either important or decisive until much later, and presidential nominations remained under the control of party bosses.

long-term effects of the direct primary

Over the course of the twentieth century, however, the primary did play a major part in the erosion of party machines. By the 1960s candidates for Congress and state and local offices had become essentially self-selecting with little element of peer review. The advent of television also made it easier to circumvent the party organization and appeal directly to voters in primary elections, and candidates could rely on personal means or those of powerful interest groups rather than party officials to secure nominations. Given these factors and the invariably lower turnout in primary elections, it is debatable whether the primary election has indeed proved to be a more representative means of selecting candidates. In combination with registration reforms that gave privileged ballot access to the Democratic and Republican parties, however, mandatory state primary laws did permanently weaken the party organizations, and preclude durable alternative parties from ever developing in the United States. In fact, the scholar Walter Dean Burnham has interpreted the Progressive Era electoral reforms as a more or less deliberate attempt to preclude the development of radical party options in American politics.

In presidential politics, primary elections began to become important in the 1940s. The major states (with the exception of California) still chose their delegates by party-controlled methods, however, and the primaries in states such as Wisconsin and Oregon functioned more to test opinion, as public opinion polls do today. Thomas E. Dewey's (1902–1971) victories in Wisconsin in 1944 and Oregon in 1948 were nevertheless decisive in propelling the New York governor toward his two Republican presidential nominations, and primary victories contributed to the presidential nominations of Dwight Eisenhower (1890–1969) in 1952 and Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) in 1956. In 1960, when John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) became the first presidential nominee whose nomination was based on a strategy of primary victories, it was clear that the presidential nomination was moving away from the convention hall. In 1968 primary defeats drove incumbent president Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) into retirement and eventual Democratic nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey (1911–1978), never overcame the stigma of having secured the nomination without entering a single primary.

Between 1968 and 1972 the Democratic Party wrote national rules for the nomination process that encouraged the adoption of presidential primaries and the Republican Party followed suit. By 1980 two-thirds of the states and over 75 percent of convention delegates were selected in primaries, and that is where presidential nominations are still won and lost with more than a little help from interest groups and the media.

primary elections in the twenty-first century

Curiously enough, primaries (including presidential primaries) remain a matter of state law, and eligibility to participate still varies from state to state. Closed primaries or primaries open to independents (but not registrants of the other party) are the most common, but some states such as Wisconsin and Washington persist with open primaries. Ten southern states plus Oklahoma also retain the runoff election even though the one-party Democratic South is long gone.

Another anomaly given that the intention behind primaries was to enhance representation of the popular will at the expense of special interests, is the effect of the extremely low participation rates in primary elections on election outcomes. Primary electors tend to be better educated, wealthier, more politically involved, and more ideological than the general public; thus, the candidates they select are not necessarily representative. In fact, the evidence seems to indicate that the primary system pulls Democratic and Republican voters toward more extreme positions, which, in turn, has contributed to greater partisanship in national elections and government over the past decade. Moreover, as most congressional districts are drawn these days to be safe for one party or the other, there is a great incentive for representatives to be more responsive to primary rather than general election voters. Presidential primary elections, which formerly took place at weekly intervals between February and early June, have been increasingly frontloaded into February and March so as to produce a nominee as early as possible and unite the party. Of course, this is of advantage to already

nationally known figures in the party with access to ample funds and ties to organized interests. Ironically then, an electoral procedure intended to break the power of party tends to reinforce partisanship.

In the international sphere the primary election has been little imitated. Most other democracies have mass party systems where the party organization choosing candidates at the appropriate level is the norm, and where party membership involves a greater commitment of time and resources than registering with a party and showing up on primary day. Some mass parties—in Israel, Great Britain, and even Mexico—have adopted a mass ballot of party members (in Britain by mail) for choosing national party leaders. Given that American parties are unique in their weak decentralized organization, the peculiarly weak concept of party membership, and their ideology (or the lack of it) by comparison with those in almost all other contemporary democracies, this is hardly surprising. And although the European mass party has shown some signs of erosion with the decay of class politics over the past half-century, and new "postmaterialist" parties with a more democratic concept of party organization have arisen, there is no indication of a significant move toward an American-type primary system elsewhere. The primary election to choose party candidates thus seems likely to remain an American anomaly.

See also: Elections; Political Parties; United States.

bibliography

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Nicol Rae