I understand there are primaries in other countries, but they tend to be closed. I have the sense from the wiki article that the primary ballot is decided by the party itself. Is that correct?
How close are the primary elections to the national elections?
Please state the country and describe how the party nomination process works in practice.
I dug up these citations: I find them mediocre for my purposes:
Wikipedia: Primary election - Wikipedia
In Australia, political parties have a paid-up membership that takes part in preselections of candidates for members of parliament. In some cases, all the members living in a constituency will take part in the ballot, and in other cases the ballot is done within a committee that represents the membership.
Party leaders (including, prime ministers, premiers and leaders of the opposition) have historically always been elected by the members of parliament (MPs) from their party, but some parties (the Greens and the Labor Party federally) include the party membership generally in choosing a party leader.
(Federally, the most recent changes in party leader were in the National and Liberal Parties. In the case of the Nationals, their MPs chose a new leader following the retirement of the former leader. In the case of the Liberals, the incumbent Prime Minister lost the support of a majority of his MPs, and was forced to resign as party leader, and hence as Prime Minister.)
In India, parties can go into national elections with or without a nominee.
Nominee is decided by party’s national executive committee.
But in reality, BJP (party of PM Modi) is the only party with strong internal democracy in India. INC is ruled by Gandhi dynasty. Most other smaller parties are ruled by 1 person or family.
For the Australian situation, **Giles **is on the money.
Preselection typically determine candidates some months prior to the poll (we don’t have fixed terms so there can be last minute rushes). However the incumbents not unexpectedly have a significant advantage and it would be unusual that the Party’s leader is not a current parliamentarian.
So typically the Australian public would know who the main party leaders are months if not years before the Federal election.
In South Africa, the President is elected by Parliament, so we don’t officially have nominees. But it’s usually understood that a party’s leader is the person who would become President if that party had a majority.
Each party has a constitution which determines how its leaders are chosen. Many of the smaller parties are essentially one-person parties organised around a charismatic leader. The larger parties have internal election processes, which generally involve local branches of the party electing delegates to a national conference which elects the leader. Being a member of a party branch requires signing up, paying a membership fee, attending branch meetings and so on - it’s not like the American “tick a box on your voter registration form” thing.
I work in the national office of one of the large political parties here, and I was involved in the administration of the last leadership election, so I can explain how my party’s system works in some detail. Every three years the party holds a national congress. The local branches of the party (or several branches joined together, depending on the size of the membership) elect delegates. The party’s elected councillors on city and town councils also separately elect delegates, and all the party’s members of Parliament and provincial legislatures are themselves delegates.
The delegates are not pledged to a candidate, though they may have been elected by their branch on the basis that they support a particular candidate. The election is conducted using secret ballots and instant-runoff voting. There’s only one round of voting, but the IRV system means that the delegates can express an order of preference for the candidates.
In the UK’s parliamentary system, every party normally has a permanent leader who is either the leader of the government already, or the leader of the opposition and assumed to be the prime minister if the opposition wins the next election. At the same time, if the leader’s position looks shaky, there is also permanent gossip about who might be next if and when the leadership is vacated, willingly or otherwise, and everything potential candidates might do in parliament and out of it is assessed with an eye to its potential effect on their chances. So, for example, in the UK, David Cameron has said he doesn’t want to be leader at the next general election, and there is speculation about what happens if he loses the referendum on the EU; so at least three or four of his colleagues are permanently under scrutiny in this way. At the same time, the leader of the Labour Party is facing ongoing murmuring from MPs who don’t like his leadership, and a recent big speech by someone who decided not to stand for the leadership last summer is being discussed as a sign that he is, as they say, “on manoeuvres”, in case there’s some sort of challenge to Corbyn’s leadership. So in a sense there’s a permanent primary campaign going on in each party, or at least each party with a serious chance of forming a government.
Each party has its own rules for selection of a leader, but basically, yes, the decision is down to members of the party (at one time, it would have been only the party’s MPs in parliament). I believe Germany and Israel have a different system in which parties nominate a potential prime minister/chancellor separately from the party leadership, but again, AFAIK, the decision is entirely down to party members.
I don’t have a real sense of what if anything it means to be a member of a party in the USA, by comparison with the UK. Here, it can be quite a commitment. At the very least, it gives you the opportunity to have some input to policy development, as well as the selection of candidates for local government and for an MP in your constituency, and the election of members of central party committees and the leadership - not to mention the implied expectation that you will be turning out on various sorts of campaigning activity, preferably come rain or shine.
The wiki article on primaries is an inappropriate attempt to shoehorn all political processes in the world into the US model and terminology. The selection processes for candidates will vary tremendously, even within one country and from party to party. Wiki is extremely US-centric in trying to use the US model as lens for all other countries. Where other countries don’t even use the term “primary” and have radically different ways to nominate candidates, it’s simply inappropriate to lump them all into a category of “primary” elections.
[RANT OFF]
Rant not directed at you, Measure for Measure. As you say, it’s a mediocre wiki article.
Turning to the meat of your inquiry, in Canada there can be a number of terms used to describe the election of a party leader, but probably the most generic is a leadership contest, so I’ll use that.
Remember that there is no election for Prime Minister (or Premier, at the provincial level). In fact, there is not even any legal office of Prime Minister or Premier.
Each party chooses a party leader. The timing of that choice is not tied directly to the electoral cycle, as it is in the US. Usually the leader is chosen at least a year or more before the next general election.
The government is not involved in the process. Each party chooses its own mechanism, and administers the leadership contest itself.
It used to be that the major parties would hold a national convention to choose a leader, and the party organization in each riding (electoral constituency) would send a number of delegates to the convention. The delegates weren’t bound, but normally were affiliated with a particular candidate.
As technology has improved, it’s possible for major parties to run a nation-wide leadership contest, where all members of the party can vote. However, some parties weight the voting in those types of contests by constituency, to ensure that the successful candidate has broad support within the party across the country.
For smaller parties, less expensive mechanisms may be used.
The rules are usually tweaked and updated each time there is a leadership contest. Here’s a summary of how each party chose their current leader, which I originally posted a while ago in another thread:
Note that the Conservatives are going through a leadership contest right now. They were in office until the election last fall but were defeated. Prime Minister Harper announced that night that he was resigning as party leader effective the transition of power to the Liberals, who won the election. The party has announced that the leadership contest will be held in the spring of 2017, which will give the new leader two years to show his/her capabilities to the public as leader before the election, expected in the fall of 2019.
That’s the leadership process. However, everyone who wants to stand for the party in the parliamentary elections has to get nominated by the local party association for each riding. That applies to the party leaders, cabinet ministers, everyone who wants to stand for election under a party banner.
Again, each party chooses their own nomination process for the ridings, but generally the nomination is decided by a meeting of the local association, sometime before the anticipated date of the election. Anyone who is a signed-up member of the local party organization can vote. The nomination process is administered entirely by the local party organization; no government involvement.
Some nomination meetings are pretty straightforward; some are raucous affairs. Sometimes they’re held in a small venue, like the Legion hall or a hotel; sometimes they’re in a major convention centre. (Speaking locally, the nomination for the Liberal candidate in one of the Regina SK ridings prior to the 1993 federal election has passed into local history as one of the most rowdy nominations ever; they had to rent the performing arts centre for it, because there was so much interest and numbers of party members wanting to participate.)
Whoever is chosen by the local association is the party’s nominee, subject to being approved by the party leader. That approval is only rarely withheld, and usually triggers a significant debate if the party leader does not accept the local party association’s nominee.
There are no “sore loser” laws: if someone fails to get the party nomination, they can still stand for Parliament. Every citizen has a constitutional right to stand for election. Some parties have internal sore loser rules: if you run for the nomination in one riding and are defeated, you’re ineligible for nomination in any other riding.
Finally, there’s the general election for the Commons. All party nominees, including the party leaders, have to run for election in their local riding. There is no guarantee that a party leader will be elected. There were some early polls that indicated Justin Trudeau might have been in trouble in his riding in the general election last fall, but he gradually pulled into the lead, winning the riding.
There have been cases where Prime Ministers have lost their seat, particularly if the party as a whole goes down to defeat. The most recent example was Prime Minister Campbell in 1993. She led her party from majority government to 2 seats in the Commons, and she herself was defeated in her own riding. That was the end of her political career.
Going back farther, Prime Minister Mackenzie King was once defeated locally, but such was his grip on the party leadership that an old war-horse Liberal in another riding resigned his seat and King ran there, getting back into the Commons.
It’s also common on election night for some Cabinet ministers to be defeated, even if their party is winning the election overall. Incumbency does not confer the significant advantage on Canadian MPs that appears to be the case in the US Congress.
Having read the posts by Giles and PatrickLondon, I thought I would add something about leadership reviews.
The parties in Canada don’t have the leadership spills that seem to be such a feature of Australian parties, and the party caucuses don’t have the power to trigger a leadership review as happened with Prime Minister Thatcher. The power to trigger a leadership review is normally with the party membership as a whole.
After every general election, most parties have a rule that at the next party convention, there is a leadership approval vote: a vote of confidence in the leader. It’s a straight approve/disapprove vote, and it doesn’t have any formal effect. However, if the leader doesn’t get a strong vote of confidence from the party, there’s a good chance the leader will resign. For example, in 1983, the Progressive Conservatives had a leadership review vote for Joe Clark, the former PM and leader of the party. He won the vote by a 66% margin, but he decided that was not a strong enough mandate. He triggered a formal leadership contest (at that time by a convention), where he stood as a candidate. He lost to Brian Mulroney, who became the party leader and ultimately Prime Minister the next year.
There are rumours that the leader of the NDP, Tom Mulcair, is facing a similar leadership challenge as Patrick London describes, given his party’s poor showing in the election last fall. (They went from Official Opposition showing a good chance of forming government, based on pre-election polls, to third party on election night). If so, it will come to a head at the next party convention.
Just noticed that Measure for Measure asked how far in advance the leaders of the parties were chosen.
Canada had a general election on October 19, 2015. Of the parties who had a seat in the Commons going into the election, here’s the dates each of the party leaders were chosen:
• Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Conservatives): March 20, 2004
• Leader of the Official Opposition, Thomas Mulcair (NDP): March 24, 2012
• Justin Trudeau (Liberals): April 14, 2013
• Giles Duceppe (Bloc québécois): June 10, 2015
• Elizabeth May (Green Party): August 26, 2006
The late selection date for Gilles Duceppe was unusual. The party had elected a separatist firebrand a few years before, who managed to alienate all of his caucus and fracture the party. He stepped down in the spring and recommended that the party council choose Duceppe, the former leader, to run in the election. Duceppe was a popular choice in the party and managed to revitalise it, so they increased their seat standing from 2 to 10. However, he himself lost his riding, so he has resigned as leader. I think they have an interim leader, pending the next leadership contest.
In the UK, as a broad principle, the party membership votes. Sometimes it’s a little convoluted with Trade Unions also voting (in the Labour election).
Party holds husting for a while, party votes, eveyone gets on with their lives.
What are the fees like for joining an Australian party? Are there other requirements? Are you expected to attend multiple meetings per year?
What sort of people become rank and file members of these parties? How much time do they spend per year on the task?
In the US, you need to register if you want to vote. Most states don’t have same-day registration. The deadline for registering might be something like a month before election day. When you register, you can choose a party to register under or you can choose, “Independent”. In some states independents don’t get to vote in the primaries. In other states they do. Oh and you only have to register once, unless you move to a new address.
That’s the entire commitment. No fees, no meetings and I’m guessing most party members do not vote during the primaries.
What are the requirements for being a signed up party member? What sort of people do that kind of thing?
Thanks to all of the posters.
I just checked, and here it costs $50 per year to belong to the Labor Party and $95 per year to belong to the Liberal Party. (There are concessional rates for retired people and for students.) Those are the two main political parties in NSW.
The other big requirement is not to stand for election or campaign against endorsed candidates of the party, or belong to any other political party. If you’re caught doing that, it will be automatic expulsion.
In the Labor Party, you need to attend some branch meetings each year until you have been a member for 10 years, and you need to belong to a trade union if you work in a job covered by a trade union, in order to vote in preselection ballots for members of parliament. In the Liberal Party, preselection is done by a committee, and they don’t have a close relationship with trade unions, so I don’t know if there’s any corresponding requirement there.
Members tend to be people with a strong interest in politics, and general support for the policies of the party – though they are free to disagree with particular policies, and even to campaign publicly against those policies. I’d guess that the average member would spend at least 12 hours per year – that would be, for example, 6 2-hour local branch meetings.
Here’s a couple of posts I made a while ago in another thread:
Unlike the Australian Labor example given by Giles, I don’t think there is any mandatory requirement to attend meetings of the local association. However, if you don’t show up very often, odds are you won’t be very influential in the local association, which is one of the reasons people join it.
As to who joins, usually the answer is the same as Giles’ answer: people who are generally committed to the party’s positions and want to see them elected, and are willing to donate time and money to achieve that goal. Some may join because they have ambitions to stand for election themselves some day, so they are earning chits by becoming a party stalwart.
Generally speaking, at a minimum these are the types of people who will cut a cheque for the party, or knock on doors, or stuff envelopes, etc., because they support the party’s platform and goals.
American political parties as a whole aren’t really membership organizations. You’re essentially a member if the people around you accept you as a member.
In Thailand, most political parties are the personal fiefdoms of wealthy crime bosses, who choose all their candidates for Parliament, etc. If a lesser crime boss wants to split from that party’s moneybags, he doesn’t contest for the leadership, he defects to a different crime boss’s party, or forms his own. (Of course, all national political parties are inactive at present.)
Perhaps Thailand isn’t the sort of “democracy” that OP had in mind. Still, it seems fair to include it since some Dopers, perhaps swayed by the success of purple-finger democracy in bringing peace and prosperity to Iraq, call for the resumption of “democratic” elections here.
You are implicitly or explicitly signing up to support the party’s principles, policies and candidates (the one unforgivable sin in most parties is to campaign publicly for a candidate standing against your own).
You may well have dreams of a career in politics yourself (but, as a great many bumptious people discover, you don’t get anywhere till you’ve put in some effort on the ground, stuffing envelopes, leafleting, knocking on doors and so on, then maybe standing for the local council before you try to get on the approved list for parliamentary candidates - except that there is always grumbling within parties when the central organisation tries to “parachute in” to a safe parliamentary seat some favoured whizzkid).
You can be as busy or not as you like. Nobody will turn your subscription away even they don’t see you from one year’s end to the next. It might be monthly meetings to plan campaigning activity and local party business, it might be turning out every other week to leaflet somewhere or man a campaigning stall, it might just be organising fundraising and social activities, it might be earnest policy debates.
Or it might be a social/cultural thing. The Young Conservatives used once upon a time to be the biggest youth organisation and marriage bureau in the country, and the bigger local party organisations will usually have some sort of active social side for meeting like-minded people (or, if you’re the Labour Party, splitting into competing cliques of like-minded people who can’t understand why the other lot think they’re the real Labour Party).
(Come to think of it, to go back to the original question, the Tories did organise a local open primary in one safe seat to select a new parliamentary candidate, and a local GP won. And she has since been highly critical of their health policies…)
It’s also worth bearing in mind there’s an increasing trend in Australia of voting for a local candidate representing a particular party on the assumption that if that party wins enough seats, then its leader will become Premier/Prime Minister.
This leads to all sorts of displeasure when the party decides the Prime Minister isn’t up to scratch and ousts them, putting someone else (chosen internally) into the Comfy Chair With Accompanying Flags.
Not sure about elsewhere, but in Queensland local council elections vote for a mayor directly as well as a ward or divisional councillor - ie the mayor isn’t picked by the councillors and can’t also be a divisional councillor themselves if elected as mayor, if that makes sense.
The number of people available to exercise these voting rights, leaving aside branch stacking and other shonks, is quite small. There are only about 50,000 Liberal members throughout Australia and 40 odd thousand Labor members. There are about 9,000 Greens well ahead of the 6,000 outlaw bikie gangs total membership. Despite the enormous amount of coverage afforded to these groups by the media and the massive outlays they have for their reelection each of them is less financially robust than an average suburban supermarket.
