Wayne P. Steger

Wayne Steger has taught courses on the American Presidency, campaigns, political parties and elections for over 20 years at DePaul University and Marquette University. His research focuses on competition in political campaigns and the formation of winning coalitions within political parties. He is currently working on a book on the hypocrisy of fiscal conservatives in Congress.

A Citizen's Guide to Presidential Nominations focuses on the competition among candidates for the presidential nomination of each party. Competition is critical to the empowerment of voters in a democracy. If party elites collude during the invisible primary to stack the deck in favor of their preferred candidates, then most of the candidates on the ballot will not have a realistic chance of winning and caucus and primary voters essentially have little choice but to go with the choice of party insiders. In about two-thirds of the nomination campaigns since 1972, party insiders do unify behind a frontrunner before the caucuses and primaries. In other nomination campaigns, however, party insiders fail to coalesce during the invisible primary--essentially enabling several candidates to remain as viable options for voters in the caucuses and primaries. In these years, voters have a more influential role in selecting the presidential nominees.

There are two main factors that distinguish these two types of races--which aptly characterize the emerging races for the 2016 presidential nominations. One, party elites and activists unify behind a presidential candidate much earlier when the party coalition is stable. Party realignment and short-term variations in participation owing to candidates and a changing issue agenda create uncertainty and make it harder for party elites to unify behind a candidate. The Republican Party is currently more divided than it has been since the Reagan era, making for a much more competitive nomination race in 2016. The second reason is that which politicians actually declare their candidacies also matters. Presidential nomination campaigns are especially competitive when the front-runner in early polls--polls three and four years before the primaries--decides not to run (like Ted Kennedy in 1972 and 1976 or Mario Cuomo in 1992). The 2016 Democratic nomination race features one major candidate and none of the other nationally known senators and governors has stepped up to challenge Clinton, essentially making it easier for her to dominate the race since party insiders and activists have few options.