Testing Theories of States' Adoption of the Direct Primary

Abstract

Understanding the origins of primary elections has important implications for evaluating their role in American elections. While there is little argument about the importance of primaries to the American electoral system, there is less agreement about why states adopted the direct primary and what they were intended to accomplish. Previous scholarship has laid out three theories: the strength of the progressive movement, parties' efforts to maintain one-party rule, and the urbanization of American society. Using comprehensive state-level data from 1892 to 1930, we test these theories of states' adoption of direct primaries. We find a strong influence of the strength of the progressive movement and the rate of urbanization on the adoption of the direct primary, but we do not, however, find any influence of state partisan competition. Our findings reinforce original arguments about the importance of the progressive movement and urbanization in the adoption of the direct primary.