178 CHAPTER 6|POLITICAL PARTIES
ballot are much less onerous than those for minor parties and independents. In
California, for example, a party and its candidates automatically qualify for a
position on the ballot if any of the party’s candidates for statewide offi ce received
more than 2 percent of the vote in the previous election. In contrast, independent
candidates need to fi le petitions with more than 150,000 signatures to get on the
ballot without a major-party label—an expensive, time-consuming task.^28 These
advantages help explain why virtually all prominent candidates for Congress and
the presidency run as Democrats or Republicans—including many congressional
candidates who ran with Tea Party support in 2010 and 2012.
National parties also manage the nomination process for presidential candi-
dates. This process involves a series of primaries and caucuses held over a six-
month period beginning in January of a presidential election year. The type of
election (primary or caucus; about two-thirds of states use primaries) and its date
are determined by state legislatures, although national party committees can
limit the allowable dates, using their control over seating delegates at the party
conventions to motivate compliance. Voters in these primaries and caucuses don’t
directly select the parties’ nominees. Instead, citizens’ votes are used to determine
how many of each candidate’s supporters become delegates to the party’s national
nominating convention, where delegates vote to choose the party’s presiden-
tial and vice-presidential nominees. The national party organizations determine
how many delegates each state sends to the convention based on factors such as
state population, the number of votes the party’s candidate received in each state
in the last presidential election, and the number of House members and senators
from the party that each state elected.nominating convention A
meeting held by each party every
four years at which states’ dele-
gates select the party’s presidential
and vice-presidential nominees and
approve the party platform.
TYPES OF PRIMARIES AND CAUCUSES
NUTS & bolts
PRIMARY ELECTION An election in which voters choose the major party nominees for political offi ce, who subsequently
compete in a general election.
Closed primary A primary election system in which only registered party members can vote in their party’s primary.
Nonpartisan primary A primary election system in which candidates from both parties are listed on the same primary
ballot. Following a nonpartisan primary, the two candidates who receive the most votes in the
primary compete in the general election, even if they are from the same party.
Open (“crossover”) primary A primary election system in which any registered voter can participate in either party’s primary,
regardless of the voter’s party affi liation.
Semi-closed primary A primary election system where voters registered as party members must vote in their party’s
primary, but registered independents can vote in either party’s primary.
CAUCUS ELECTION A series of local meetings at which registered voters select a particular candidate’s supporters as
delegates who will vote for the candidate in a later, state-level convention. (In national elections,
the state-convention delegates select delegates to the national convention.) Caucuses are used in
some states to select delegates to the major parties’ presidential nominating conventions. Some
states’ caucuses are open to members of any party, while others are closed.