Abstract
In the past decade, ideological division has become the dominant discourse of internal party conflict, transforming the nature of congressional primary races. Congressional nomination contests have gone from localized candidate-centered races into ideologically orientated policy battles as candidates have become aligned with nationalized party factions. This chapter finds evidence in the 2014 and 2018 mid-term congressional primaries of a dramatic increase in factional primary contests. This has led to reduced focus on valence factors such as candidate competence and experience, and greater interest in ideological and policy positioning of candidates, with a marked increase in ideological and faction-oriented rhetoric present in congressional primaries.
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Notes
- 1.
As well as identifying 963 ‘No Contests’.
- 2.
Candidate finance information from www.followthemoney.org
- 3.
Boatright makes the important point that the reasons given for a primary challenge may be subjective; it may be that more challengers than in the past are claiming the challenge is ideological as this is a better electoral strategy.
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Cowburn, M. (2020). The Transformation of the Congressional Primary. In: Oswald, M.T. (eds) Mobilization, Representation, and Responsiveness in the American Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24792-8_5
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