Political parties generally hold national conventions at which a group of delegates collectively decide upon which candidate they will run for the presidency. The process of choosing delegates to the national convention is undertaken at the state level, which means that there are significant differences from state to state and sometimes year to year.
The two methods for choosing delegates to the national convention are the caucus and the primary. Caucuses were the original method for selecting candidates but have decreased in number since the primary was introduced in the early 's.
In states that hold caucuses a political party announces the date, time, and location of the meeting. Generally any voter registered with the party may attend. At the caucus, delegates are chosen to represent the state's interests at the national party convention. Prospective delegates are identified as favorable to a specific candidate or uncommitted. After discussion and debate an informal vote is taken to determine which delegates should be chosen.
In the early twentieth century there was a movement to give more power to citizens in the selection of candidates for the party's nomination. The primary election developed from this reform movement. In a primary election, registered voters may participate in choosing the candidate for the party's nomination by voting through secret ballot, as in a general election.
There are two main types of primaries, closed or open, that determine who is eligible to vote in the primary. In a closed primary a registered voter may vote only in the election for the party with which that voter is affiliated.
For example a voter registered as Democratic can vote only in the Democratic primary and a Republican can vote only in the Republican primary. In an open primary, on the other hand, a registered voter can vote in either primary regardless of party membership. It was chaired initially by Sen. George McGovern and then by Rep. Donald Fraser. Its report brought state delegate allocations into line with the distribution of population and required state parties to adopt open procedures for selecting delegates rather than allowing state party leaders to pick them in secret.
In practice, states mostly implemented this by adopting presidential primaries — which generally induced Republicans to make the same change. The new system kicked off a chaotic era in which mavericks and factional leaders could win over the objections of party leaders.
In , McGovern took advantage of his own reforms to win the Democratic nomination, even with an ideology so unacceptable to major party factions that the AFL-CIO didn't support him over Richard Nixon.
Then in , Jimmy Carter won the Democratic nomination despite a total lack of ties to the party establishment in Washington, and proceeded to win the White House and then not pursue the party's agenda. Also in , incumbent President Gerald Ford faced an extremely strong primary challenge from conservative leader Ronald Reagan and was forced to drop the incumbent vice president from the ticket in order to appease conservatives.
Four years later, incumbent President Carter was challenged from the left by Ted Kennedy, his renomination secured only by the rally-round-the-flag effect induced by the Iranian hostage crisis. At around this time, it became fashionable to observe that American political parties were in decline. University of California Irvine political scientist Martin Wattenberg achieved the apogee of this literature with his classic The Decline of Political Parties in America since updated in five subsequent editions , citing the waning influence of party professionals, the rise of single-issue pressure groups, and an attendant fall in voter turnout.
After all, a party whose leaders can't even pick its own presidential nominee in a reliable way isn't much of a party at all. George H. Just when journalists and political scientists were ready to proclaim the death of parties in favor of candidate-centered politics , the pendulum started to swing back.
Over the past 35 years, incumbent presidents have had zero problems obtaining renomination — even presidents like George H. Bush and Bill Clinton who alienated substantial segments of the party base with ideological heterodoxy during their first term. Reagan and Clinton both passed the baton to their vice presidents without much trouble. Insurgent candidates who caught fire with campaigns explicitly promising to shake up the party establishment — Gary Hart in , Pat Robertson in , Jerry Brown in , Pat Buchanan in , John McCain and Bill Bradley in , Howard Dean in , Mike Huckabee in , and Rick Santorum in — repeatedly gained headlines and even won state primaries.
But while s insurgents were able to use early wins to build momentum, post-Reagan insurgents were ground down by the sheer duration and expansiveness of primary campaigns.
Tactics that worked in relatively low-population, cheap states like Iowa and New Hampshire simply couldn't scale without access to the broad networks of donors, campaign staff, and policy experts that establishment-backed candidates enjoyed.
They argue that party insiders had found a way to control nominations by replacing the old smoke-filled rooms of the convention with a new series of insider bargains largely struck before convention voting begins. It's this "invisible primary" among party elites that truly matters. To test their idea, the book's authors tallied up endorsements from a broad set of party figures across two and a half decades of primaries.
They included everyone from famous elected officials to local politicians to activists to celebrities, and calculated each endorser's importance in the party. If one candidate was the clear winner in pre-Iowa endorsements and also won the nomination, then it could be said that the party had decided.
And that's just what they found. In eight of 10 competitive presidential primary contests between and , endorsements showed that party insiders clearly backed one candidate before Iowa, and that candidate then went on to win the nomination.
Endorsements were better at predicting the outcome than polls, fundraising numbers, or media coverage. The authors don't argue that endorsements alone specifically cause a candidate to win. Rather, endorsements are a signifier of how the invisible primary is going — and therefore of which candidate the party network is choosing to favor.
It's a theory that gained enormous prestige during the Republican primary cycle, which saw a series of novelty candidates rocket and then tumble in the polls, only for Republican voters to eventually settle on Mitt Romney, whom the establishment had favored the whole time. Romney's relatively calm affect, his moderate record as governor of Massachusetts, and his Mormon faith all gave him trouble connecting with the conservative grassroots. But in the end, it didn't matter any more than it mattered for Taft or Humphrey or the forgotten Davis — the party thought he offered the best combination of commitment to conservative principles and electability, so he got the nod.
The problem with trying to understand the rules governing presidential elections is that there simply aren't very many. A year streak without a non-party-leaders-approved McGovern-type scenario or a strong challenge to an incumbent president is pretty striking.
As of November , the following 12 politicians and public figures had been discussed as potential candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. Individuals in this list will be removed or added based on statements from candidates on their potential candidacy and media reports.
The following chart shows Republican presidential campaign fundraising, including both total receipts and contributions from individuals, as well as campaign spending. Figures for each candidate run through the end of June or through the final reporting period during which the candidate was actively campaigning for president.
The total disbursements column includes operating expenditures, transfers to other committees, refunds, loan repayments, and other disbursements. As of November , the Republican National Committee had not released any information about possible Republican primary debates. The following chart includes the campaign logo and slogan for each Republican presidential candidate. The following chart shows the Republican presidential ticket from every presidential election between and Ballotpedia features , encyclopedic articles written and curated by our professional staff of editors, writers, and researchers.
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