Poll: Convention or Primary?
Conventional wisdom says that primaries produce battle-tested candidates who have wider appeal with the electorate. In Virginia anyone can vote in either the Democratic or Republican primaries, since voters do not register by party. This also allows Independents to vote in either primary too. Voters can only vote in one primary and not both. One can make the argument that a candidate nominated by primary would certainly have wider appeal; however, others insist that political opponents can manipulate the process and vote for the weaker candidate. Exit polling detailing the voter makeup of various primaries rarely give credibility to political opponents showing up in large enough numbers to sway a primary.
In the 2008 democratic presidential primary, the amount of excitement generated between the Obama and Clinton campaign’s can certainly be viewed as a positive influencer, which resulted in a fired up electorate that provided a springboard to an eventual victory in the general election.
This definitely wasn’t the case for the 2009 democratic primary in Virginia. The major difference was that in 2008 both campaigns had built solid field operations and both were poised to hit the ground running in the eventuality that they won. Money was a non-issue in that the candidate that won was pretty much assured of being able to raise a significant amount of money. Fast forward to 2009. The democratic gubernatorial candidates in trying to secure the party’s nomination burned limited financial resources (unless we are talking about Terry McAuliffe), while the lone republican candidate ran unopposed and got his field operation in place sooner. This is also unlike 2008 when republicans had a contested primary.
Conventions and caucuses are usually tightly controlled by the party establishment, which conventional wisdom would say would not necessarily lead to the candidate with the widest ideological appeal. Of course, this doesn’t always hold. What conventions and caucuses do buy you is a shorter, quicker process for nomination. Against an entrenched, well-financed incumbent, this allows a nominee to begin the general election cycle earlier and not burn a significant amount of financial resources.
There are tradeoffs in any decision on the best nomination method to choose. Since this blog hails from the 1st Congressional District, here is a question:
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