District Conditions and Primary Divisiveness in Congressional Elections

Abstract

Divisive primaries have traditionally been considered indicators of party organizational weakness and they can have a negative effect on a candidate's prospects for winning the general election. Yet, their causes remain virtually unexplored. This study examines a number of factors that are believed to encourage the development of divisive nomination contests. The results demonstrate that demographic and geographic factors, the status of the seat, its partisan bias, state-level political opportunity structures, and party recruit ment efforts influence the divisiveness of primaries for the U.S. House of Representatives. Some of these variables affect the two parties differently. Population diversity is found to be a major cause of divisive primaries in the Democratic party and to have no effect on Republican contests, while political opportunity structures have an effect on Republican primaries but not Democratic contests. The findings demonstrate that at least part of the explanation for the divisiveness of congressional nomination contests lies in the characteristics of congressional districts themselves.