THE primary elections could be called “Presidential Preference Primaries” because those elections allow people to tell, long before the November 2008 Election Day, which candidates they prefer for president.
Often there is a front-runner, or a first choice, for a candidate of one party during the primary
election
season. If an incumbent president – one currently in office – wants to run again, or if an incumbent vice president wants to run for
president, those candidates are considered to have an advantage over someone new. But, in this election, there was no incumbent running. That meant it was more of an equal race among the other candidates since none of them had the advantage of already being president or vice president.
Primary elections aren’t really elections because no one is chosen for an office.
The primaries measure only how much likely support a candidate has for the upcoming election. Primaries are not written into the Constitution, either. In fact, before 1900, there weren’t any primaries. Presidential candidates were chosen at the party conventions. But, around the turn of that century, more and more people wanted to be involved in the election process. They didn’t want the whole election run by the party bosses, as they had been. So states began holding primary elections. The first was held in Florida in 1901.
Regular citizens voted for the people – called delegates – who would go to the party conventions to choose the candidates. That way, more people had a say about who got chosen because they could vote for the delegate who supported the same candidate they wanted.
Almost every state now holds a primary election, as do Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The laws vary from state to state as to when the primaries are held and whether they are “open” or “closed.” Closed primaries are those where registered voters vote only for candidates in their own party. In those, Democrats may choose only from the Democratic candidates and Republicans only from theirs. In open primaries, any voter may choose a candidate from any party.
Winning a primary may not win the election, but it is important for a few reasons. Candidates who win primaries are seen to be more popular, and because of that they are able to raise more money to run the rest of their campaigns. If you were going to donate money to a candidate, wouldn’t you want your hard-earned money to go to a popular candidate who had a good chance to win? You can see why winning a primary is vital for raising campaign funds. Also, winning a primary means that a candidate will have
some delegates supporting
him or her at the convention,
where the candidates are
actually chosen.
States may decide when they want to hold their primaries. As the primaries got more important, more states wanted to hold theirs earlier. They felt that the earlier
primaries had more influence in the real election. States all
compete for being “key” to
elections so that they have more say in who gets to be president.
Credits
This Hot Topics Hot Serials supplement was:
Written by Debby and Ned Carroll
Edited by Ken Bookman
Designed and illustrated by Roel Wielinga
Studio De Phantasm
© Copyright 2008.
News Story
Learning standards: summarizing, locating information
Which of the presidential candidates are making front page news? Write a summary of any article about a candidate.