Presidential Nominating Patterns

Abstract

IN THE YEARS since the origins of the national party conventions, 61 presidential nominations have been made by the present major political parties and their predecessors. The Democratic party has met in national convention in every presidential year since 1832, a total of 31 times. The Republican party held its first national convention to nominate a presidential candidate in 1856. But the progenitors of the Republican national conventions may fairly be held to include the National Republican convention of 1831 and the Whig conventions of 1840-52, a total of five cases that can be added to the 25 of the Republican party. Party bolts and third parties produced additional nominations of substantial importance in certain presidential years, but the present article is confined to the analysis of the 61 major party nominations in national party conventions. A Classification System for the Nominations Three types of case can be distinguished in which the presidential nomination operates to confirm an existing party leadership. The first is the renomination of a President originally nominated and elected as such. The second is the nomination for a second term of a President who had originally been nominated and elected as a vice-president, but who had succeeded to the Presidency through death of the incumbent. The third is the renomination of a titular leader - a second or third nomination of a party candidate who had suffered defeat in a previous election. When the presidential nominating process operates to replace a previous leadership or to fill a void that has been left open by the retirement, nonfunctioning, or ineffectiveness of the previous leader, at least six possible patterns in the succession can be distinguished. These have been defined as follows in a previous work: 1 1. Inheritance of leadership by an understudy who was selected by