Preventing another raucous nominating convention in which the Democratic Party would fight over delegate selection rules was the goal of the McGovern-Fraser Commission. The commission’s work revolutionized and democratized the presidential nominating process, concluding that it needed to provide voters with opportunities for meaningful and timely participation. This conclusion led to the proliferation of primaries and caucuses that are now the main event of the presidential nominating process. Despite the democratization of the process, however, the parties still have a great deal of power over the process by endorsing candidates and, more importantly, by setting the rules with which both candidates and voters must comply.
The Primary Rules helps us navigate these rules surrounding the nominating process. Every four years the major parties tweak the rules to correct for problems that arose in the previous nomination cycle, making extra work for voters, candidates, and scholars trying to follow the process. Caitlin Jewitt provides the first comprehensive view of how the rules have changed after institution of the commission’s reforms, analyzing all nominating contests since 1972. Although the nomination process has indeed been democratized, Jewitt clearly demonstrates that the parties still have a tremendous amount of power over the process through their ability to set the rules; this power is just not as explicit as it was pre-reform.
Jewitt’s argument is clear and concise: to better understand presidential nominations, we need to better understand how the rules affect the nominating process. These rules, set by the parties, determine how the nomination contest will unfold, affecting candidates and voters both. She correctly asserts that “the parties are private organizations and are free to prioritize whichever objectives they deem most important, as well as select presidential candidates through any manner they choose” (p. 221). However, what would have strengthened this argument is a larger discussion of how the rules often dictate candidate strategy. Jewitt acknowledges the rules’ impact, noting that “behavior is likely to change under different rules. Candidates and campaigns are strategic and seek to maximize benefits given the constraints at play” (p. 207). What she fails to acknowledge is that the rules allow for party control not only of how nominating contests are run but also of how candidates campaign. If candidates are devising strategies based on rules changes, this provides the party another avenue of power.
The opening chapter highlights nicely the various pieces of the complex process of nominating presidential candidates, laying the foundation for Jewitt’s thesis that rules matter and both candidates and voters are largely bound by those rules. She contextualizes well the roles of voters and parties in the current, post-reform process. The second chapter builds on this contextualization by thoroughly discussing, as the title of the chapter states, how we got here. It is mostly an historical analysis of the evolution of the nomination process, from “King Caucus” to our current system. Additionally, she provides significant detail on the several commissions put together post-reform to tinker with the rules in response to the various foibles that inevitably come with each round of nominating contests.
A major concern of both parties over roughly the past three decades has been an increasingly front-loaded calendar, which is the subject of the third chapter. An important contribution of The Primary Rules comes in this chapter, in which Jewitt explicates her novel measure: the “front-loading discount score.” This score provides nominations scholars with a useful quantitative measurement of front-loading, based largely on the timing of the contest while accounting for the “linearly diminishing” feature of front-loading (p. 69). It also provides a singular measurement of front-loading for each nomination contest and allows for a comparative analysis of the amount that occurs across cycles. Using this measure, Jewitt is able to demonstrate that front-loading has indeed become more common recently, but it is not the case that each contest has become more front-loaded than the last.
This new front-loading discount score is used in the fourth chapter to test for the impact of front-loading on turnout rates. Jewitt demonstrates that the conventional wisdom that front-loaded nominating contests tend to end sooner, leaving less time for meaningful participation, is not always the case. Through her thorough analysis of all contests post-reform, she concludes that front-loading actually provides voters with an increased ability to meaningfully participate because the attrition process has not effectively winnowed the candidate field down to a singular presumptive nominee in a majority of states, especially when a contest includes multiple strong candidates. Although this implication goes unmentioned, this finding seems to support the rationale for a same-day national primary. Reform plans are not the centerpiece of The Primary Rules, yet this finding raises an interesting question of whether parties are attempting to reduce front-loading in an effort to diminish the idea of a national primary.
The fifth chapter examines the impact of the rules—specifically the type, openness, and timing of contests and delegate allocation rules—on turnout rates, while controlling for competitiveness. The interesting finding here is that delegate allocation rules have no impact on turnout rates, with similar null results for the timing of the contest. However, coefficient testing of the appropriate linear combinations of this timing measure does demonstrate that turnout is positive or statistically significant in several cases. This implies that front-loading does not lead to increased turnout, with Jewitt concluding that “turnout is boosted when a contest is held later in the competitive portion of the nomination” (p. 157). This is a compelling finding, but would benefit from a more detailed explication of these linear combination tests, as well as a larger discussion of how state parties may best be able to predict when the competitive window will close.
Finally, in the sixth chapter, Jewitt offers a comprehensive analysis of how all post-reform nomination outcomes would have changed under different delegate allocation rules, finding that several contests would have resulted in a different nominee had the rules been different. This is indeed an interesting exercise that clearly demonstrates the importance of the rules governing nominating contests. However, and Jewitt does acknowledge this, changing the allocation rules would also change the behavior of the candidates. Candidates devise strategies based on the rules used; thus it is impossible to tell whether the actual results would have changed if the rules were different.
This criticism regarding candidate behavior is largely beyond the scope of The Primary Rules. Jewitt’s goal in her comprehensive look at the rules governing nominating contests post-reform is to demonstrate the power parties have over the nomination process because of their ability to set the rules. Considering the increasing complexity of these rules, this is a laudable goal and one Jewitt undeniably accomplishes.
