A primary election is an election that narrows the field of candidates before an election for office. Primary elections are one means by which a political party or a political alliance nominates candidates for an upcoming general election or by-election.
Primaries are common in the United States, where their origins are traced to the progressive movement to take the power of candidate nomination from party leaders to the people.
Other methods of selecting candidates include caucuses, conventions, and nomination meetings. Historically, Canadian political parties chose their candidates through nominating conventions held by constituency riding associations. Canadian party leaders are elected at leadership conventions, although some parties have abandoned this practice in favor of one member, one vote systems.
Read more about Primary Election: Types, Primaries in The United States, Primaries in Europe, Primaries Worldwide
Famous quotes containing the words primary and/or election:
“If the accumulated wealth of the past generations is thus tainted,—no matter how much of it is offered to us,—we must begin to consider if it were not the nobler part to renounce it, and to put ourselves in primary relations with the soil and nature, and abstaining from whatever is dishonest and unclean, to take each of us bravely his part, with his own hands, in the manual labor of the world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Well, I am chiefly interested in the renomination, so don’t get disconsolate over that. If we lost the election I shall feel that the party is rejected, whereas if I fail to secure the renomination it will be a personal defeat.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)