Causes Of Primaries

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As demonstrated by the quote from Hirano, Snyder, Ansolabehere, and Hansen, the popular theory of activists controlling primaries suggests that activists not only force candidates to ideological extremes to win primary elections, but they also compel newly elected officeholders to remain more extreme than they normally would. This forces the party to risk losing the seat, because moderate candidates do better in general elections. Activists find primaries easier to take over than general elections because there are fewer voters to contend with, as most people do not bother voting in primaries. Primaries are not large enough to bring in the large sums of money needed to catch the public eye, and those who do vote in primary elections tend to be more involved in politics. People involved tend to have issues they care about or reasons to remain loyal to a specific party, otherwise they would not be involved. (Brady, Han, Pope, 2011)
This article will discuss two time periods, from each of which I will examine the Senate and House primaries from three years. I have chosen the early 1970s and the 2010s. There is data easily available on both periods, and although the 1970s are not as bipartisan as previous years, they offer a vast increase in the number of moderate politicians in office compared to the 2010s. Although both of the chosen decades were controlled primarily by Democrats, the party in power will not affect this article 's research. In order to determine what level of control activists have over primary elections, election results from OurCampaigns.com and America Votes have been used to find and compare election data on each selected year. In order to demonstrate that activists do not have a significant impact on creating polarization, I will investigate turnover of congressional incumbents in primaries. Because primaries have lower voter turnout than a general election, they will be affected less by the general electorate, which is, as a whole, more moderate (Brady, Han, Pope, 2011). Those who vote in primary elections tend to be more ideologically extreme. Primary elections also involve a lower level of money and support from parties and,thus, are less affected by the political elite. (Jacobson, 1978) I will compare periods of partisanship and bipartisanship in order to find differences in turnover. Normally, over 98% of incumbents win their primaries, however, if activists do indeed cause polarization by controlling primaries, then we would expect two things to happen. First, higher levels of partisanship will correlate with a much higher turnover rate when compared to the turnover rate when the legislature is less polarized. Second, there would be fewer primary challenges when there is a higher turnover of incumbents in the general election. However, if activists have little control over politics, one will expect to see a similar, or perhaps lower level of turnover in primaries in heavily partisan years. There will also be no change in the number of successful primary challenges when the turnover rate of incumbents in general elections is low. If there is a significant difference in successful primary challenges between the partisan 2010s and the bipartisan 1970s, then it can be expected that activists have an impact on primary challenges. If not, then there is no federal electoral evidence demonstrating that activists have an effect in primaries. For the theory of activist-controlled primaries to be correct, polarized activists would defeat moderate and anti-activist platform officeholders in the primaries, while pushing forward increasingly polarized candidates who agree with their
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The data gathered in this article can also suggest other major causes of polarization. If the political elite had the greatest sway over the candidates, there would be very little turnover because most candidates would have no reason to be ousted except when they were removing themselves from their party. In this case, a low level of turnover could be expected regularly. Similarly, if the electorate base had the most influence in who was elected, a moderate level of turnover could be expected regularly in primaries. In times of scandal, a very low level of turnover could be expected, as more incumbents would be defeated in re-election. The electorate would remove bad candidates and push ones more reflective of their viewpoints to the forefront of their parties over

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