Political parties indisputably serve as intermediaries in converting individual political will into collective state governance. When they do so, are they servants or usurpers of constituent self-governance? While the White Primaries cases established that the Court intervenes when parties effect unequivocally illegitimate (i.e. racially exclusionary) democratic practice, when party affiliation activates constitutional scrutiny on a standalone basis remains unsettled. In areas such as state control over primary design and ballot access, the Court has struggled with parties’ dual status as public utilities and private organizations. This dual character has led to fierce debate regarding when the Court should police parties, and when they should be protected. Parties’ unsettled status has recently been exemplified by the partisan gerrymandering litigation, which highlights the debate over whether partisan coordination’s centrality to American governance facilitates or threatens popular self-rule. The Court has been hesitant to explicitly acknowledge that this raw question of parties’ impact on citizen self-rule drives its constitutional jurisprudence.

Given the Trump administration’s ambiguous approach to religion discussed in the previous chapter, Chapter 15 explores how American Christians have reacted to it. It finds that although there initially appeared to be a certain level of religious immunity among practicing Christians against Trumpism, this religious ‘vaccination effect’ against national populism has since diminished and even reversed to the extent that, unlike in Europe, American Christians have become one of the populist right’s most loyal constituencies. American Christians’ ‘conversion’ to Trump appears, however, to be less the result of a shift in their attitudes than of supply-side factors. Specifically, a perceived lack of political alternatives as well as the inability and unwillingness of Christian leaders to publicly speak out against Trumpism seem to have contributed to this development.

Rounding out Part 1, Kathleen Bawn, Knox Brown, Angela X. Ocampo, Shawn Patterson, Jr., John L. Ray, and John Zaller report results from one of the largest “on the ground” studies of candidate selection ever undertaken. Focusing on fifty-three potentially winnable open seat House races in the 2013–14 election cycle, the authors interviewed local participants and observers to probe the processes behind candidate selection in primary elections. The extensive fieldwork reveals that groups, which may include local party organizations, are the central political actors in the selection process. Voters rely on signals from the groups, whose primary objective is to minimize uncertainty about a candidate’s commitment to particular policy goals. Because this objective may lead groups to promote nominees who are not closest to the primary electorates’ ideological preferences, the candidates who win may be more ideologically extreme than even the primary electorates are. The chapter therefore highlights how analyses that focus on the general election, such as Chapters 2 and 6, are dependent on the candidates that emerge from the primary selection process.

The disruptive power of technological innovation is one of the defining features of modern life. The presidential nomination process is no exception. Changes in communication technology have profoundly shaped how presidential candidates conduct their campaigns. First radio, then television, and more recently the internet have successively emerged as essential tools for effective political communication. A presidential candidate cannot compete without embracing the new communication technologies of the day. But the adoption of new technology has relentlessly increased campaign costs for more than a century. This chapter examines how technology has shaped the presidential nomination process, making the pursuit of the White House an ever more expensive proposition.

Presidential primaries have a simple purpose: they are the elections to select a party’s presidential candidate for the general election. But they are often much more than that. In some states, they also serve as the first step in a series of steps that political parties use to handle other assorted types of business.

When voters go to the polls during a primary election, they are not voting for a presidential candidate. Instead, they may be helping to choose representatives to attend the party’s national nominating convention, a meeting where the actual presidential candidate is chosen. Or they may be choosing representatives to attend local conventions, like a county convention or a state convention, who will in turn go on to choose the representatives to attend the national convention. Or voters may be choosing representatives who will later meet to help choose presidential electors, the individuals who formally elect the next president and vice president.

With the conclusion of each presidential election, scholars, commentators, and political junkies begin the quadrennial exercise of discussing reform of the presidential nomination system. If we could alter the process in just the right way, goes the thinking, we would get better nominees, a more informative campaign, and everyone, or at least a lot of people, would be happier with their choices on the next presidential ballot.

And why not? How hard can it be to improve our presidential nominating system? After all, in 2016, both Gallup and Pew reported that voters had historically negative impressions of both major party nominees, so changes that would improve voter satisfaction must be low-hanging fruit. Indeed, the authors in this volume have offered up a number of thoughtful, intelligent suggestions for reform.

Why do we have an Election Day but not a Primary Day? No aspect of the presidential nomination process causes as much controversy as the primary calendar. The calendar starts off in January or February and ends in June of each election year. A total of 57 states and territories hold their primaries and caucuses over the course of these months. The Iowa caucuses always start off the calendar, followed by the New Hampshire primaries. The results of these contests invariably eliminate some candidates and bestow momentum on others. Many more candidates participate in the first few presidential nomination contests than in the many later ones. As a result, disproportionate power is given to voters whose states hold early nomination contests, while the citizens of states with later nomination contests have less or sometimes no voice in choosing their party’s presidential nominee. In most years, a party’s presidential nomination contest ends months before citizens in the late-voting states have ever had a chance to cast their ballots. To gain more influence and a greater voice, a number of ambitious states have tried to move their primaries and caucuses forward, creating a phenomenon that has come to be known as “front-loading.”

When it comes to electing the chief executive of the United States, the presidential debates play an important role in shaping public opinion and the choices facing voters. Having a fair process in place to determine who is eligible to participate in the debates and to guarantee that the debates are conducted neutrally is crucial to ensuring the integrity of the electoral process as a whole. In the past, controversies have arisen concerning which candidates should be invited to participate, which political parties should be represented, and whether the debates have been conducted in a way that is fair and neutral. Most of these controversies have never been resolved satisfactorily. Today, much more work needs to be done to ensure that our presidential primary and general election debates live up to their potential to provide truly diverse policy views to the public and are conducted in a manner that is wholly free from bias. Gender bias in terms of the questions asked of the candidates was evident in 2016, and other kinds of biases may appear in the future. Problematically, the eligibility rules for the general presidential debates have remained unchanged for decades. Meanwhile, government oversight of the debates remains virtually non-existent.

National convention delegates are chosen through a bewildering array of procedures that vary from state to state. Because states, for the most part, determine not only whether parties hold a primary or caucus, but also which voters are eligible to participate, delegates arrive at the national convention having been selected by very different constituencies that have very different policy ideas and very different levels of commitment to their respective parties.

The result is that neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party is able to express a clear ideological message through its presidential nominations. Presidential candidates seeking to win delegates in different state elections must appeal to the electorate in each state—and the state electorates differ greatly because the state-imposed voter eligibility rules differ greatly from state to state. As a result, candidates who articulate a clear and consistent message will draw different levels of support from the primary electorate in the various states, even when their messages appeal to similar proportions of party members and non-party members in each state.