Primary election
Primary elections, or direct primary, are voting processes by which voters can indicate their preference for their party's candidate, or a candidate in general, in an upcoming general election, local election, or by-election. Depending on the country and administrative divisions within the country, voters might consist of the general public in what is called an open primary, or solely the members of a political party in what is called a closed primary. In addition to these, there are other variants on primaries (which are discussed below) that are used by many countries holding elections throughout the world.
For other uses, see Primary (disambiguation).
The origins of primary elections can be traced to the progressive movement in the United States, which aimed to take the power of candidate nomination from party leaders to the people.[1] However, political parties control the method of nomination of candidates for office in the name of the party. Other methods of selecting candidates include caucuses, internal selection by a party body such as a convention or party congress, direct nomination by the party leader, and nomination meetings.
Primary elections are typically held for offices that have a rigid term, such as a president, governor or member of a legislature. However, offices such as a prime minister, which can be replaced without recourse to a new election, typically do not have a dedicated primary election. However, a de facto primary for such offices may exist: for example, a leadership election, where party members elect the leader of their political party. In the vast majority of instances, a party's leader will become prime minister (in a national election) or premier/chief minister/first minister (in a province, state, territory, or other first-level administrative subdivision) should their party enter government with the most seats. Thus, a leadership election is also often considered to be one for the party's de facto candidate for prime minister or premier.
However, Prime Ministerial primaries have been held in inter-party electoral alliances, such as the 2021 Hungarian opposition primary, and also in cases where a single party opted to retain its leader but select someone else as its Prime Ministerial candidate, as the Portuguese Socialist Party has done in 2014.
The inverse may also happen; the Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan automatically bestows the party's internal leadership on a sitting DPP president.