America’s Got Talent? Measuring Candidate Competence in Presidential Primaries

• In Event: The Presidency and Electoral Connections

Abstract

With more than 25 serious candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and more than 15 in the 2016 Republican nominating contest, the range of experience and characteristics of presidential candidates in both major parties appeared unprecedentedly broad. As we look ahead to 2024 and beyond, should we look at the 2016 and 2020 nominating contests as typical or exceptions? Even with extensive journalistic and scholarly attention in recent years to candidates and primaries, we do not have a systematic account of candidate experience or characteristics over time that would provide a set of expectations for what lies ahead.

Since FDR’s last election in 1944, the significant changes in constitutional term limits, party nomination rules, campaign finance regulations, and media and communications technology have altered the incentives for and barriers to candidate entry into major party presidential nominating contests. Drawing on a new dataset of candidates for major party nominations from 1948 to 2020, this paper evaluates how the institutional and technological changes have influenced the number and type of candidates competing for the major party nominations. This analysis highlights how the range of candidates within the two major parties has in some ways constrained voter choices even as the democratization of nominating procedures and restrictions on campaign finances since 1968 attempted to expand those choices.

Author

• Evan Haglund, US Coast Guard Academy