The Direct Primary and Candidate-Centered Voting in U.S. Elections

In this paper we document a strong correlation between the use of primaries and the transition from “party-based” voting to “candidate-oriented” voting in U.S. statewide elections. First, at the aggregate level we find that the direct primary is associated with a significant increase in “split-ticket” voting, both across states and within states over time. Second, we use a new data set of county level primary election returns to examine the relationship between primary and general election voting patterns. We find that general election candidates gather more votes in counties where they received relatively high electoral support in the primaries, even after taking into account election-specific factors and the “normal vote” across counties. We also provide some evidence that primary competition may affect the salience of particular candidate attributes in general election outcomes.