Primaries, Conventions, and Other Methods for Nominating Candidates

The way political parties select their candidates should be considered a fundamental topic in political science. In spite of being profoundly consequential in several regards, candidate selection methods were understudied for a long time in the academic literature. A renewed awareness of the implications of different nomination rules, along with an increased use of primary elections around the world, has accelerated this research in the last two decades. This chapter reviews the main areas of inquiry regarding candidate selection as reflected in contemporary research. It surveys the most recent literature asking four broad questions about candidate selection methods: What types are there? What consequences do they have? What are their origins? What questions can be formulated for future research? The chapter aims to convey that research on candidate selection is important, growing, and full of open questions.