Ideological Representativeness of Presidential Primary Voters

Abstract

Contrary to conventional wisdom and previous research, this article finds little evidence that presidential primary voters are ideologically unrepresentative. In drawing this conclusion, two assertions are made. First, the article argues the appropriate comparison group for primary voters is general election voters who fail to vote in primaries, not all primary nonvoters. The latter group includes habitual nonvoters whose differences from primary voters would be attributable not to the primary process but to general patterns of participation in the United States. Second, the article argues ideology must be defined as more than extremism. Ideology can be construed as a sophisticated belief system or a psychological identification. Only on these latter two definitions do a few minor differences arise between presidential primary voters and general election voters.