ABSTRACT
The nomination of candidates for political office through party primaries, where all party members – and sometimes even all party supporters – are allowed to vote, has been one of the most disruptive events party organizations have experienced in the last decades. This chapter explores whether party primaries are either a sufficient or a necessary condition for parties to nominate different types of candidates, in terms of their personal, political, and partisan backgrounds. However, the literature presents conflicting evidence on what the effects of primaries are. This chapter contributes to empirically solve this controversy using the variance generated by the nomination of candidates for prime minister in Spanish regions. The results show that party primaries do not change radically the sociodemographic and political profile of top candidates, but they do seem to be slightly more unexperienced and unknown by the general public.
