My friend and I have a dispute about the primaries that I am hoping can be settled by the members of this forum. I say that the primary elections of a political party are binding, but my friend says that the primaries are not binding and that the party bosses make the final decision. Please help.....

Well this is how I see it. If the people who belong to a party make a choice, and then that choice is not respected, then that is fine. All the people of the party should just leave that party and join a third party. If anyone is dumb enough to stay in a party where the party bosses have no respect for their decision, then they deserve to have their votes trampled upon.


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Primary Elections are where the party faithful chose their nominee. If the party choses a nominee, hopefully the other candidates unite behind their nominee.

As far as party bosses overriding a primary vote, I have never heard of that, but i'd imagine it is possible. However, if that ever happened, it would be political choas. It is always best to trust your voters. If they made a bad decision, it will come back on them come election day.

Both the presidential primary and the direct primary came into widespread use in the early twentieth century. The progressives who sponsored them wished to purify American politics, to destroy the power of party bosses and their machines, and restore the right of the people to govern themselves. Arguably these reformers have been altogether too successful in that primaries have savagely weakened American political parties, institutions which, despite their flaws, are indispensable in democratic political systems.

It does not make sense in calling the primaries an election if you have the party bosses overuling the election. Party bosses have only a small percentage of delegates who generally vote for the candidate who wins the general primary. In case of a close tie, all the delegates actually vote at the convention. This has happened only once in the recent past when Ford narrowly defeated Reagan.

The purpose of the Primary process is to find the candidate that the voting constituents favor. Sort of like marketing research, you ask a lot of questions of a group of people and gain real feedback data from them. Now lets say that a company hires a marketing research firm and pays them good money for information regarding their product, if they get feedback that is not to their liking and choose to go against the data retrieved they would be foolish and would have wasted a lot of money. LIkewise, in the primaries, much money is spent in the primary process (campaign money, etc.) and much real data is collected (votes). If political party bosses disregard the feedback of the American people in the primaries they too would be foolish and wasting a lot of money. For instance, Mike Huckabee doesnt seem to be the favored son of the Republican party machine. However, he is finding much favor with the average American voter (gained most votes of the Republicans in the Iowa Caucus). If Huckabee continues to gain favor in primary elections the party would be foolish to not endorse him.