Party Primaries Research Articles

Industrial Structure and Party Competition in an Age of Hunger Games: Donald Trump and the 2016 Presidential Election

The U.S. presidential election of 2016 featured frontal challenges to the political establishments of both parties and perhaps the most shocking election upset in American history. This paper analyzes patterns of industrial structure and party competition in both the major party primaries and the general election. It attempts to identify the genuinely new, historically specific factors that led to the upheavals, especially the steady growth of a “dual economy” that locks more and more Americans out of the middle class and into a life of unsteady, low wage employment and, all too often, steep debts. The paper draws extensively on a newly assembled, more comprehensive database of political contributions to identify the specific political forces that coalesced around each candidate. It considers in detail how different investor blocs related to the Republican Party and the Trump campaign as the campaign progressed and the role small contributors played in the various campaigns, especially that of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. It also critically evaluates claims about the final weeks of the election in the light of important overlooked evidence.

Godfatherism and political party financing in Nigeria: Analysing the 2015 general election

Godfatherism is one of the major obstacles towards genuine democratisation and good governance in Nigeria. In every political setting, there are financiers of politicians for elective positions and the financed ones. In Nigeria, the phenomenon of godfatherism denotes multi-billionaires sponsoring anointed candidates for elections at all levels in return for favours and undue advantage towards the sponsors. This is a problem which impedes the emergence of popular and credible candidates who can deliver the dividends of democracy. The work examined the role played by godfathers in sponsoring politicians during the 2015 General Elections including the nature and dimension of the financing as well as its effects on the outcome of elections. The paper used a qualitative method of data collection and analysis where interview was conducted with some selected informants from various categories involving politicians, party stakeholders, academicians and focus group discussion with some selected electorates. The primary data obtained was analysed using qualitative method with existing secondary data on the subject of study. The study discovered that, godfatherism played a vital role in determining candidates for the major parties and that, a new dimension in godfatherism emerged where politicians who control power now transformed into financiers of their elections unlike before. The study recommends that, for a better selection of candidates and transparency in fielding contestants for elections, party primary elections should be transparent and INEC as the electoral body responsible for election conduct in Nigeria should intensify measures of checkmating money politics and fostering of candidates selection based on party principles and not anointment. Keywords : elections, godfatherism, money politics, political financing, political parties, politicians https://doi.org/10.17576/geo-2018-1401-01

Electoral violence during party primaries in Kenya

ABSTRACTSince the restoration of multi-party democracy in Kenya in 1991, elections have witnessed intra-party violence during the primaries for selecting parliamentary and civic seats candidates. This article addresses the question of why electoral violence occurs during party primaries in Kenya and argues that violence is an outcome of the organization of political parties, which has revolved around personalities identified with ethno-regional interests rather than institutionalism. The upshot has been the absence of party institutionalization to establish structures for recruitment of members and organization of primaries. Such organizational weaknesses have denied parties the capacity to match the intense competition for tickets of ethno-regional dominant parties that guarantees nominees to win seats in their strongholds. Intra-party violence has followed. The article submits that intra-party electoral violence in Kenya is a function of the politics of clientelism and ethnicity, both of which have severely hampered the institutionalization of political parties and their capacity to cope with the stiff competition for the tickets of ethno-regional dominant parties.

Gender role reversal in political debate?

AbstractFocusing on the Aubry – Hollande debate that took place in the context of the 2011 French socialist party primaries, we observe a possible reversal of gender stereotypes and examine word choices as well as more subtle cues such as interruptions, hedges, etc. If the debate could be described as a stereotypical gender role-reversal, we suggest that these cues point to a more complex picture than a gender reversal, and that the pragmatics structuring the dialogue might be interpreted as a pattern of challenger/champion. Moreover contrasting press articles and comment in online forums on the same debate we invoke a ‘peri-performativity concept’ to explain the differences in interpretations of the politicians’ performances, and conclude that perlocutionary dimensions can be reinterpreted by dominant discourses, (de)/(re)-constructing the performativity of speech acts.

A tale of party primaries and outsider candidates: the 2017 French presidential election

The 2017 French presidential election was astonishing. It returned a candidate, Emmanuel Macron, with no established party political support. This article places the 2017 election in context. It argues that the introduction of primary elections for the system’s main political parties had unintended consequences that helped Macron win the election. It also argues that Macron’s victory was due a more general electoral context that was wary of established parties and elites, that helped populist candidates, and that eventually returned a candidate in a manner that resembled the return to power of Charles de Gaulle in 1958.

Political Identity, Decision-Making and Communication in the Age of Digital Media: A Case Study on the 2016 US Elections

Acknowledgments: This research was supported by a grant from the project POSDRU/187/1.5/S/155383.IntroductionThe US presidential elections, which have been decided this past November, have been called one of the most peculiar electoral cycles in recent history (Inglehart, Norris 2016). The party primary elections have featured two unexpected surges in popularity for candidates with little nation-wide recognition as political figures, both being portrayed as populists outside the mainstream doctrines of their respective parties. The general election on the other hand, has been carried by a controversial outsider candidate, with no political experience, despite losing the popular vote by the widest margin in United States history.In the Democratic primary, the unexpected candidacy came from Bernard Bernie Sanders, an independent, little-known, political veteran that had held various congressional seats for the state of Vermont since 1991 (Chadwick, Stormer-Galley 2016). Despite his early handicap, and the near-certainty of most political commentators of the victory of his opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator Sanders managed to gather over 43% of the primary votes, and raised around $230 million in donations, most of it in the form of small donations from individual donors - a record for political campaigns in the US (Chadwick, Stormer-Galley 2016). The main focus of his campaign has been concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the richest Americans, with other important issues being environmental concerns, anti-militarism, gender and racial equality and civil rights to privacy.The Republican primary election ended up being dominated by Donald J. Trump, a New York real-estate businessman and TV personality, whose only previous forays in the political scene had consisted in various proposals at a third party candidacy and his association with the 2011 conspiracy movement surrounding president Barack Obama's citizenship, claiming that he had been born outside the United States, and demanding he produce his birth certificate (Pham 2015). His platform centered around a series of nativist and protectionist positions, such as anti-immigration, opposition to free-trade deals and introduction of additional trade tariffs, imposing strict controls on the entry of Muslims in the US, as well as practicing a higher degree isolationism in regard to diplomatic relations. Trump ended up winning the Republican primary elections, with nearly 45% of the final vote, despite the opposition of a large portion of the Republican Party elites and leading intellectuals, and their concerted effort in the later part of the primary election cycle to prevent him from winning.What is especially puzzling in this debate is not simply the shift in tone of the policies that a good deal of voters respond to (when compared to the previous electoral cycles), but the complete inability of the upper echelons of either party to put forward a credible insider candidate that can mobilize this popular shift into partisan support. This coincided with some of the largest-scale usage of social media in any US presidential campaign to date, as the percentage of American adults using social media has increased to around 78% (compared with 56% during the 2012 election and 24% during the 2008 election) (Statista, 2016), with 44% of voters getting their election news through this channel at the beginning of the year (Greenwood, Perrin, Duggan 2016).In the following paper, I will briefly explore how exactly this unique situation came to be, how is public discourse and its content shaped by the current medium of online social networking and communication, how this medium is built from a concrete institutional perspective, and what is the relationship between the way in which voters construct their identity and the way in which candidates have their public images crafted in relation to this type of discourse produced by our current media-industrial complex. …

Postelection surrealism and nostalgic racism in the hands of Donald Trump

This article builds on interlocutor comments to “The Hands of Donald Trump: Entertainment, Gesture, Spectacle” (Hall, Goldstein, and Ingram 2016), a study published before the 2016 presidential election that analyzes Trump’s use of derisive humor in the Republican Party primaries. We move this earlier analysis forward by examining the ways that Trump’s semiotic displays on the campaign trail now inform the material policies of the Trump administration. Our response reflects upon two currents that characterize this postelection moment: first, the surreal mix of gendered and racialized nostalgia embedded in Trump’s iconography and message, and second, the intensification of white racism as Trump’s rhetoric of patriotic nationalism becomes government. Bringing the responses of our esteemed interlocutors into conversation with the philosophical work of Walter Benjamin, Susan Buck-Morss, and Susan Sontag and the historical work of Carol Anderson, we suggest that Trump’s spectacle of governing embraces sexual transgression, civil lawlessness, and excessive opulence, all of which encourage a pro-white semiotics and a return to racisms past.

Democracy and Good Governance in Nigeria: The Imperatives of Supporting Institutions

Democracy thrives better where good governance is the rule not exception. Since Nigeria returned to democratic rule in 1999, the people expects more from the state. This research was conducted to appraise the role of key pillars of democracy and good governance in Nigeria. These include but not limited to political party, INEC, Judiciary and the Public Service. It was found out in this research that there is selective compliance with court pronouncements by the executive. Party primaries was seen as the litmus test for credible elections in Nigeria. INEC, PDP and former President Goodluck Jonathan were commended for conducting credible polls and relinquishing power freely. The study concluded that success of democracy in Nigeria is contingent on strong democratic institutions. It was recommended that politicians must eschew traditional greedy material accumulation which impedes democratic deliverables. An independent judiciary was urged to rise to the occasion by delivering justice to all- persons and institutions brought before it.

The impact of endorsements in intra-party elections: Evidence from open primaries in a new Portuguese party

What affects the prospects of candidates in open intra-party elections? This research article examines the determinants of candidate performance in the first open party primaries conducted by LIVRE, a newly emerged Portuguese party, in 2015. This innovative process of candidate selection allowed individuals from outside the party not only to vote but also to run for office. Through the construction of an original dataset and the use of social network analysis, this study shows that centrality in the network of endorsements has a significant impact on the probability to be selected in party lists. Our findings shed additional light on the determinants of success in candidate selection and open new insights into the dynamics behind party primaries.

The effects of primaries on electoral performance: France and Italy in comparative perspective

For some years now the clamour for the democratisation of internal party politics has been spreading. This issue has been addressed in Italy and France. In the run-up to the 2013 parliamentary election in Italy and the 2012 presidential election in France, leftist coalitions held open primary elections to select their chief executive candidates, with Pier Luigi Bersani and Francois Hollande finally emerging as nominees. In this article, we examine whether the levels of turnout and competition in the party primaries are associated with the results of the general election. Using data at the level of the Italian province and the French departement, we show that the results of the general election were affected by the primaries. We show that turnout enhanced electoral performance, while competition depressed it. The positive effects of turnout were greater than the negative effects of competition.

Unity for Democrats But Not Republicans: The Temporal Dynamics of Intra-Party Bias in U.S. Electoral Politics

Political identification is strong, stable, and the basis of enduring conflict, suggesting that attitudes towards candidates and their supporters will be difficult to change. Here, however, we show that the shift from party primaries (characterized by intra-party conflict) to the general election (characterized by inter-party conflict) can cause identities to be reconfigured - animosities between supporters of rival primary candidates can attenuate as superordinate goals (defeat rival party) and superordinate identities (Democrat/Republican) come to the fore. We provide a fine-grained account of these temporal dynamics by collecting data weekly from mid-June to early September 2016 (total N = 2,183), examining prosocial giving between supporters of competing primary candidates recruited from the online labor market Amazon Mechanical Turk. At the outset of our study, both Democrats and Republicans showed intra-party bias: that is, they shared more money with people from their own party who supported the same primary candidate compared to members of their own party who supported a different primary candidate. This in-group bias among Democrats remained high until the Democratic National Convention, and then disappeared entirely shortly thereafter. Bias among Republicans, conversely, existed at a high level both before and after, but not during, the conventions. These findings emphasize both the discontinuity and contingency of changing identities. The abrupt elimination of bias among Democrats, but resurgence of bias among Republicans, suggests that a superordinate goal of defeating the other party (which was salient for both sides during the shift to the general election and was particularly emphasized during party conventions) was not sufficient to bring supporters of different primary candidates together for a sustained period. Rather, sustained change may require successful efforts to emphasize shared (superordinate) party-based identity – a task which our data suggest the Democratic National Convention succeeded in achieving.

Primaries, patronage, and political personalities in South-western Uganda

ABSTRACTThis paper is an ethnographic study of the National Resistance Movement Party primaries that took place in the constituency of Rwampara County, Mbarara District, between mid and late 2015. Based on fieldwork carried out during the primary campaigns, it offers a detailed examination of the five candidates’ campaign strategies in the run-up to the polls. It focuses in particular upon the ways in which they all sought to secure votes through making frequent public donations to potential voters. Building upon recent insights from a nascent anthropology of corruption, the paper argues that it is crucial to understand how these gifts were conceptualized, both by their givers and their recipients. It finds that although these donations generally made sense to everyone involved in terms of long-standing cultural logics regarding the ‘proper’ operations of power (amaani), this is not to say that they simply reflected cultural continuities. On the contrary, over the course of the campaigns, both the practices of gifting, and the meanings that attached to these, changed significantly. This helps to explain how and why, in the context of all of this gifting, the donations of one candidate – and one candidate only – came to be seen as illegitimate (i.e. as ‘corrupt’).

Polarization, Inequality, and the State Legislatures

While legislative polarization at the national level has been carefully examined and largely explained, the causes of polarization in state legislatures have been more elusive. Studies examining factors such as gerrymandering and party primaries as possible explanations have found largely undetectable or at best very modest relationships between these variables and levels of polarization. This paper provides an explanation of state legislative polarization based on socio-economic and demographic factors within the states. Economics and demographics have long played a significant role in understanding party choice, vote choice, the decision to abstain or vote, and support for various policies. Because of this we explore if these factors also influence polarization of state legislatures. Utilizing the Shorr-McCarty polarization data for state legislatures, which provides the differences between the mean Democratic and Republican legislator scores, and controlling for important economic and demographic factors, we explain a significant amount of the polarization existing in state legislatures. These findings present a fascinating look into not only the root causes of polarization in state legislatures, but also point to some fundamental differences in politics and ideology at the state and national levels.

Who Can Be President of the United States?: Candidate Hillary Clinton and the Problem of Statutory Qualifications

Abstract Qualifications for public office restrict democratic choice, but such restrictions have a long pedigree in many jurisdictions. For example, the U.S. Constitution sets out qualifications for elected federal officials: i.e., Representative, Senator, President, and Vice President. Qualifications for those positions include provisions relating to age, citizenship, and residence. It has been long debated whether these textual qualifications are exclusive (i.e., floors and ceilings) or whether they are merely floors, which can be supplemented by additional qualifications imposed by Congress or by the States. Once again, this issue has become topical. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is a prominent candidate in now-ongoing Democratic Party primary elections. These primaries select delegates to a national convention which will choose the Democratic Party’s candidate for the 2016 popular presidential election. It has been alleged that, during her term as Secretary of State, Clinton violated a provision of the federal statute mandating government record keeping. 18 U.S.C. § 2071 provides: “Whoever, having the custody of any … record … willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same … shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.” This Article addresses two interesting interpretive challenges posed by Section 2071. First, does Section 2071’s “office under the United States” language reach the presidency? Second, if Section 2071’s “office under the United States” language encompasses the presidency, is the statute constitutional? In other words, does Congress have the power to create additional qualifications for the presidency?

Is the Israeli Democracy a Hindrance to Peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority?

Scholars of Israeli politics have overestimated the role of the Israeli military generals in shaping Israel’s security policy and the peace process with the Palestinian Authority (PA). They also underestimated the role of the Knesset in the process. This article claims that not only the Knesset has a final say in ratifying any peace agreement with the PA but the Knesset has become a hindrance to peace. The structure of Israeli democratic system, that is, the proportional representation (PR) system, has boosted the power of small parties beyond their relative size, while the party primaries bestowed autonomy on the party candidates from their party leadership. Under these circumstances, the Israeli government has become a weak actor, where a small party could break down the governing coalition and topple the government. The article claims that the weak Israeli government operates within a strong State, both domestically vis-à-vis society and internationally. While the State security institutions are able to enforce the rule of law and dissolve settlements for the sake of peace, the government cannot guarantee that the legislative branch could approve such a decision.

Closed primaries versus top-two primaries

The top-two primaries recently approved in several US states eliminate closed party primaries and create instead a single ballot in which the first and second place winners pass to the general election. We conduct a theoretical analysis to compare the electoral consequences of top-two primaries with those of closed primaries. Each primary procedure induces a sequential game with three stages: candidate-entry stage, primary elections, and general election. We analyze the equilibria of these games and show that top-two primaries contribute to political moderation. In particular, when the median voter is extreme, closed primaries always generate extreme winners and, yet, top-two primaries can generate moderate winners. Furthermore, when the median voter is moderate but the partisan median voter of her party is extreme (and some additional mild conditions hold), closed primaries always generate extreme winners while top-two primaries always generate moderate winners. We also show that top-two primaries increase the number of swing states since, in certain cases, the party affiliation of the winner under top-two primaries may not coincide with the party affiliation of the median voter.

Candidate Selection in Germany

In comparative terms, the strong legal regulation of internal party processes is a specific feature of the German party democracy. Local and regional party conventions are the formal sites of decision making in selecting parliamentary candidates. The national party level is relatively excluded from the procedures. The article argues that the decentralization of intraparty competences has facilitated a gatekeeping role for local and regional party elites. At the constituency level, most often a single candidate is presented to the party convention after he or she has been appointed in the informal preselection activities of local party elites. Gaining a local nomination is the crucial step for obtaining a federal parliamentary mandate, either by winning a direct constituency mandate or being awarded a safe list position. At the regional level, Land party elites are in control of producing balanced party lists. The article also looks at newer developments, such as the introduction of party primaries and gender quotas. It shows that these developments have somehow weakened, but not fundamentally altered, the predominance of subnational party elites in candidate selection.

The Millennial Vote in the 2016 Democratic Primary Elections

The Millennial Vote in the 2016 Democratic Primary Elections Fred M. Shelley (bio) and Ashley M. Hitt (bio) introduction and background In the spring of 2016, Democratic Party voters began the process of selecting their party’s nominee for President to succeed Barack Obama. During 2015, five candidates began campaigning for the Democratic nomination, including former Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of New York, former Governors Martin O’Malley of Maryland and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, former Senator James Webb of Virginia, and Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont. Chafee, Webb, and O’Malley generated very little enthusiasm and soon dropped out. By late 2015, it had become clear that Sanders would become Clinton’s primary challenger. Many journalists and observers regarded Sanders, who was 74 years old, a self-described democratic socialist, and not even a formal member of the Democratic Party for most of his career, as an unlikely challenger to Clinton. Clinton had been a well-known public figure for more than two decades, including eight years as First Lady, eight years as a Senator, and four years as Secretary of State. Sanders has served in Congress for 25 years, but as an obscure Senator from a small state had received little public attention. During late 2015 and early 2016, however, public opinion polls showed steady increases in support for Sanders. By February 2016, some public opinion surveys showed that support for Sanders and Clinton among likely Democratic primary voters had become even. According to these public opinion polls, Sanders’ strength came particularly from millennial voters, or those aged between 17 and 29.1 Survey after survey revealed that a large majority of millennial Democrats preferred Sanders to Clinton—a pattern reminiscent of 2008, in which millennial voters gave then-Senator Barack Obama a large majority of votes over Clinton in both the Democratic Party primaries and the general election (Shelley and Hollen 2011). This unexpectedly high level of support for Sanders among millennial voters helped to keep Sanders’ campaign afloat in the early primaries. [End Page 273] In 2016, the process of selecting the Democratic Party nominee began with precinct caucuses in Iowa on February 1. The first primary election took place in New Hampshire on February 9, followed by caucuses in Nevada on February 20 and a primary election in South Carolina on February 27. These first four contests were followed by eleven more on March 1, which was dubbed “Super Tuesday” and included primaries in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia and caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota. Among these fifteen states, Sanders and Clinton fought to a virtual tie in Iowa. Clinton won in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Nevada, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, while Sanders won Colorado, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Vermont. During the weekend of March 5 and 6, Sanders won caucuses in Kansas, Maine, and Nebraska while Clinton won a primary in Louisiana. On March 8, Clinton won by a landslide in Mississippi but lost narrowly to Sanders in Michigan, which she had been expected to carry by more than ten percentage points. A week later, Clinton won Florida handily, won North Carolina and Ohio by substantial margins, and won narrow victories in Illinois and Missouri. In this paper, we investigate geographical dimensions of support for Sanders among millennial voters in these early primaries and caucuses, and how racial identification affected the decisions of young voters. First, we review reasons underlying Sanders’ popularity among younger Democrats relative to Clinton. Drawing from social media sites and various other media sources, and using exit poll data at the state level, we compare levels of support for Sanders among millennial voters relative to other voters. We then investigate other aspects of millennial support for Sanders, using county-level election data from 2016 and 2008, census data and data taken from social media sites. why have millennial voters preferred sanders to clinton? As Sanders’ support increased in public opinion polls in early 2016, observers noticed that the surge in levels of support for Sanders’ candidacy was particularly evident among millennial voters. Public opinion surveys indicated that current college students, most of whom are millennials, are more liberal...

Party Control of Party Primaries: Party Influence in Nominations for the US Senate

Scholarship on primary election outcomes has largely ignored the ability of political parties to shape outcomes and influence the decisions of candidates to compete for the party’s nomination. Only recently have theories of parties as networks of policy demanders suggested that parties influence the candidate nomination process. Previous attempts to document party control of primaries, however, have only tested these theories on small or unrepresentative samples of primary races or have looked at general election results after the party’s nominee has already been selected. Using a simple and easily understood measure of party support, I show that candidates who are less connected to the party are less likely to win and also less likely to remain a candidate in the primary. I find that parties not only are effective in helping candidates win but also are influential in excluding certain electoral options from being presented to primary voters.

The Office of President of the United States, Statutory Disqualification, and Candidate Hillary Clinton

Constitutions, statutes, and regulations create public offices, and frequently such legal instruments also create qualifications for those offices. When positive law creates qualifications for elected positions, these restrictions limit the scope of democratic choice. Nevertheless, such restrictions on democratic choice have a long pedigree in a variety of jurisdictions. Adjudications relating to qualifications to public are not uncommon. Likewise, in the United States, the Constitution sets out qualifications for elected federal officials: i.e., Representatives, Senators, President and Vice President. Such qualifications include, among others, provisions relating to age, citizenship, and residence. Courts and commentators have long debated whether the qualifications in the Constitution’s text are exclusive (i.e., floors and ceilings) or whether they are merely floors, which can be supplemented by additional qualifications imposed by Congress and/or by the Once again, this issue has become topical. Hillary Clinton, a former Secretary of State and former Senator, is a prominent candidate in the upcoming Democratic Party primary elections. These primaries select delegates to a national convention which will choose the Democratic Party’s candidate for the November 2016 popular presidential election. It has been alleged that, during her term of service as Secretary of State, Clinton violated a provision of the federal statute mandating government record keeping. Section 2071 of Title 18 of the United Code provides: Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his and be disqualified from holding any under the United States. Section 2071’s language poses two interesting interpretive challenges. First, what is the scope of the statute? In other words, does Section 2071’s generally worded office under the United States language extend to the presidency? Second, if Section 2071’s general office under the United States language fairly encompasses the presidency, is the statute constitutional? In other words, does Congress have the power to create additional qualifications for the presidency beyond those already expressly stated in the Constitution’s text?