How Republicans Pick Nominees from Party Bosses to Primaries and Caucuses

Go ahead and search the Constitution for the words "political party." Take your time. You will not find them. Nor will you find a primary, a caucus, a delegate or a convention. The men who wrote the document that governs us were suspicious of factions, and they built a government that did not mention the machinery by which we now choose our Presidents. Every piece of that machinery was added later, by reformers, by accident, by state legislatures and by party rule-writers, and each piece was added to solve a problem somebody had.

That is the secret of the nominating system: it is a patchwork, and patchworks have logic only if you know how each patch got sewn on. So let me walk you through the history, then the rules as they work, then the best arguments for and against changing any of it. Because if you are going to have an opinion about how Republicans pick a nominee, you ought to know what you are arguing with.

Stage one: the bosses

In the party's early decades, a Republican became the nominee through a convention of delegates. Where did the delegates come from? From state conventions, which came from county conventions, which came from precinct meetings. At each level the people who showed up and ran the meeting had an advantage, and in the era of city and state political machines, those people were the party bosses: the men who controlled patronage, jobs and favors. A boss who could deliver a state's delegation to a candidate could expect something in return, and the whole system ran on that kind of trade.

It was not all corruption. The system had a logic: the people who ran the party organization knew the candidates and had to live with the results. The nominee would need those organizations to turn out votes in November. A candidate with no standing in the party was not likely to win. This is the case that defenders of the old system made, and it was not a silly case.

But it had a weakness. If the bosses made the decisions, the ordinary Republican voter had no say. And in the early twentieth century, a reform movement decided that the voter should.

Stage two: the Progressive-era primary

The direct primary is an election held by the party's voters to choose the party's candidate. It was a Progressive-era invention, and the best-known early example was in Wisconsin. In 1903, the state legislature passed a law, championed by Governor Robert La Follette, that required parties to choose their candidates for state office by a statewide primary election, not by convention. The reform spread across the country. By the 1910s, most states had adopted some form of primary for state and local offices.

The presidential primary was a separate step. A dozen or so states had adopted some version of a presidential primary by 1912. The 1912 campaign shows both the promise and the weakness of the early system. Former President Theodore Roosevelt challenged President William Howard Taft, and Roosevelt won most of the primaries. But many states did not hold primaries, and in those states the organization controlled the delegates. Taft won the nomination. Roosevelt's supporters walked out and formed a new party. We tell that drama in Taft, Roosevelt and the Convention Fight That Split the Party in 1912.

The lesson of 1912 was that a primary which does not bind the delegates is only advice. For the next half century, presidential primaries were mostly beauty contests, which gave candidates a way to demonstrate their popularity, but not a way to win. A candidate such as Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 could use strong primary showings to convince party leaders that he could win a general election. But the nomination was still won in the back rooms. The story of those back rooms is the subject of From Smoke-Filled Rooms to Prime Time Republican Conventions in Dated Steps.

Stage three: the reforms after 1968

The next great change came from the other party. After the turbulent 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, the Democrats appointed a commission, usually remembered by the names McGovern and Fraser, to reform how they chose delegates. Their rules pushed the Democratic Party toward open, proportional, primary-based selection. And here is the part Republicans sometimes forget: because primaries are generally run by state governments under state law, when states changed their laws to satisfy the Democratic rules, the Republican side changed too. The number of presidential primaries grew substantially in the following years, and delegates came increasingly from contests in which voters chose among candidates.

That is the origin of the modern system. Republicans did not set out to adopt it; in many states they inherited it. By 1976, the system was mixed enough that President Ford and Ronald Reagan fought through a long primary season and arrived at the convention essentially tied. After that, the rule became simple: the candidate who won the most delegates in the primaries and caucuses won the nomination. The fight in Kansas City is told in The 1976 Kansas City Convention and the Last Real Fight Over the Nomination.

Parties versus states: who makes the rules?

There is a basic tension in the system that every Republican should understand. Primaries are run by the states, under state law, and paid for by the state. But the party is a private association with First Amendment rights. Who wins when they disagree?

The Supreme Court has addressed this question several times. A few cases give you the outlines:

1. Cousins v. Wigoda (1975). The Court held that a state court could not override the national Democratic Party's decision about which delegates to seat at its national convention. The national party's rules prevailed over a state's interest in the dispute.
2. Democratic Party v. Wisconsin ex rel. La Follette (1981). The Court held that Wisconsin could not require the national Democratic convention to seat delegates chosen in an open primary in a way that conflicted with the party's rules.
3. Tashjian v. Republican Party of Connecticut (1986). This one was a Republican case. Connecticut had a closed primary, meaning only registered party members could vote. The state's Republican Party wanted to let independents vote in its primaries for federal and statewide offices, and the Court held the state could not forbid it. A party has a right to define its own membership for purposes of choosing its candidates.
4. California Democratic Party v. Jones (2000). The Court struck down California's "blanket primary," in which voters of all parties could pick from one ballot, because it forced parties to associate with voters who did not belong to them.

The takeaway is that the party has real power over its nomination rules, but it cannot ignore the states' election machinery. In practice, the arrangement is a negotiation. The national party sets the outer limits, such as which dates are allowed and how delegates may be allocated. The states decide whether to hold a primary or a caucus, who may vote, and when.

Primary or caucus, open or closed

In a primary, voters go to the polls, cast a ballot, and leave. In a caucus, voters attend a meeting at a set time, discuss the candidates and vote, in some states by dividing into groups. Caucuses take more time and attract fewer participants, and they tend to favor candidates with strong grassroots organizations. Primaries are run like elections.

Next, who may vote? In a closed primary, only registered Republicans can vote. In a semi-closed primary, independents may choose a party's primary. In an open primary, any voter may choose which party's primary to join on Election Day. Rules vary by state, and the details change, so check your state's election site, as we explain in Can I vote in the Republican primary? Your registration questions answered.

Iowa and New Hampshire

Two small states come first, and they have for decades. Iowa's caucuses have led off the calendar since the 1970s. New Hampshire has held the first primary in the nation since 1920, and a state law directs its secretary of state to schedule the primary ahead of any similar contest elsewhere. The small states have advantages. Candidates must meet voters in person, shake hands in diners and answer questions from people who will not be impressed by a television ad. A little-known candidate with a good ground game can break through.

They also have costs. Neither state looks like the whole party. Iowa has a long record of picking winners who do not become nominees: Mike Huckabee in 2008, Rick Santorum in 2012 and Ted Cruz in 2016 each won there and did not win the nomination. The early states winnow the field before most voters have been heard. Then in 1988, a group of Southern states grouped their primaries together on a day that came to be called Super Tuesday, to give their regions more weight. Since then, states have competed to hold contests earlier in the year, a trend called front-loading. The calendar has become a race to the front of the line.

Winner-take-all versus proportional

This is the most important rule and the least understood. It decides how votes become delegates.

Let me do a hypothetical, clearly labeled as one. Suppose a state has 100 delegates and three candidates. The vote splits 40 percent for A, 35 percent for B and 25 percent for C.

• Under a proportional rule, the delegates divide roughly in line with the vote: A gets 40, B gets 35, C gets 25. After the state, A leads B by 40 - 35 = 5 delegates.
• Under a winner-take-all rule, A gets all 100, and B and C get zero. After the state, A leads B by 100 - 0 = 100 delegates.

Same vote, completely different effect. Winner-take-all ends a contest faster. Proportional keeps it going. The Republican National Committee has changed its rules about this over the years. For the 2012 cycle it required states holding contests before April 1 to allocate delegates proportionally; for 2016 it moved the date to March 15. We examine how that played out in The 2016 Republican Primary and How a Field of Seventeen Became One. The rules are rewritten at each convention, so check the Republican National Committee's website and your state party's site for the rules in force. Our elections page is a place to start, though the rules themselves are the authority.

The case for and against changing it

Here are the arguments, stated the way their proponents would state them.

For more voter power (primaries over caucuses and conventions). A primary lets the largest number of voters participate, and a secret ballot beats a public show of hands. Delegates should reflect the voters, not insiders. If the party is going to claim the support of its voters, it should earn it in an election. This is the Progressive argument, and it has won.

For a role for party insiders and activists. The people who work for the party year-round, who run for office and who have to govern together, have knowledge the average primary voter lacks. A nominee who cannot get along with his own party's officeholders has trouble governing. A system that rewards the loudest voice in a low-turnout primary may produce nominees who win primaries and lose general elections. We saw some of that in the Tea Party era, The Tea Party Wave of 2010 Explained from Santelli to the Statehouses, and the party has argued about it since.

For a different calendar. Reformers have long proposed rotating regional primaries, or grouping smaller states first and larger ones later, so that no two states hold a permanent privilege. Defenders of the current calendar say that early small states let underfunded candidates compete.

For leaving it alone. The system produces a nominee, usually by springtime, with months to unify the party before the convention. A system that works well enough is a reason for caution about any big change.

Here is my take. The system's biggest flaw is not who goes first. It is turnout. A primary decided by a fraction of eligible Republicans gives enormous power to whoever bothers to show up. The remedy is not a new rule. It is a bigger crowd. The party that calls itself a movement of ordinary people should be able to turn out its ordinary people. For the case that every Republican owes the primary a vote, read Why every Republican owes the primary election a vote, every time.

The bottom line

• The nominating system is not in the Constitution. It was built piece by piece: conventions run by bosses, Progressive-era primaries after Wisconsin's 1903 law, and a wave of state primaries after the Democratic reforms that followed 1968.
• Parties and states share the job. The state runs the election, and the party sets its own rules within limits the Supreme Court has drawn in cases like Tashjian and Jones.
• Delegate rules decide the race. Winner-take-all can turn a 40 to 35 vote edge into a 100-delegate lead, while proportional rules keep the race alive. Learn which rule applies in each state.
• Check the calendar for the next race early. The Republican National Committee and your state party publish the dates and rules, and they change from cycle to cycle.
• Vote in your primary or caucus, and bring someone with you. The system gives the most power to the voters who show up.