ABSTRACT
To illustrate how time and sequence impact the selection of presidential nominees, this chapter reviews the 2016 nominations. The chapter overviews the shaping of the nominating calendar and the movement of states seeking to maximize influence in the selection process before recounting the major parties’ nominating contests from the pre-primary, or invisible primary, identification of front-runners, to the winnowing of candidates in early contests and the identification of the parties’ presumptive nominee. The chapter reviews the race between Clinton and Sanders and controversies over intra-party favoritism and the role of the superdelegates before turning to the Republican nomination, Trump’s path to the nomination, and the intra-party resistance to his nomination at the convention. In both nominations, the chapter highlights the expectation of adhering to the popular will of the parties’ rank-and-file voters in the selection of the nominees in light of the scholarly debate over who controls the nominating process: party elites in the invisible primary stage or the voters through the selection of convention delegates under the momentum model. The chapter closes with the likelihood of significant party reform in the future and the parties’ revisions of timing and delegate allocation rules in anticipation of 2020.
