ARTICLE
A Primary Cause of Partisanship? Nomination Systems and Legislator Ideology
Research for this article was supported by the National Science Foundation, Award Nos. SES‐1059716 and SES‐1060092. The authors would like to thank Michael Crespin for helpful comments on an earlier draft. Data from this study can be found at http://dvn.iq.harvard.edu/dvn/faces/study/StudyPage.xhtml?globalId=hdl:1902.1/22116&versionNumber=1.
Abstract
Many theoretical and empirical accounts of representation argue that primary elections are a polarizing influence. Likewise, many reformers advocate opening party nominations to nonmembers as a way of increasing the number of moderate elected officials. Data and measurement constraints, however, have limited the range of empirical tests of this argument. We marry a unique new data set of state legislator ideal points to a detailed accounting of primary systems in the United States to gauge the effect of primary systems on polarization. We find that the openness of a primary election has little, if any, effect on the extremism of the politicians it produces.
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