Explaining Individual Participation in Presidential Primaries

Abstract

While presidential primary voters now virtually dictate the choice of presidential nominees, direct investigations are rare of why individuals participate in these low turnout elections. Instead, two tangential phenomena have received the most scholarly attention. The first of these is the level of turnout in the various primary states (Geer 1989: chap. 3; Kenney and Rice 1985; Moran and Fenster 1982; Norrander and Smith 1985; Ranney 1977; Rothenberg and Brody 1988). The second is the representativeness of presidential primary voters (Geer 1988, 1989: chap. 2; Hagen 1989; Kritzer 1980; Lengle 1981; Norrander 1989b; Ranney 1972). Both areas of research, however, have heuristic value for the study of individual participation in presidential primaries, which is the subject at hand. For example, the cross-state variation in primary turnout has often been seen to hinge on the number of candidates competing. Moran and Fenster (1982) explained this finding by referring to rational choice theory: as more candidates compete, more people will find a candidate closer to their preferred issue positions, and thus will vote. Yet the actual effects of candidate evaluations on an individual's likeli-