Selecting Candidates through Party Primaries: Voters and Members’ Preferences in the 2014 Local Open Primary in Barcelona

The use of open primaries brings voters and party members together to select the party candidate. This has advantages increasing the representativeness of the candidate, but also disadvantages if the candidate finally selected is not the favorite for the party members, generating possible internal discontent and disaffection. Since party literature has proved to what extent party members have often more radicalized views than voters or candidates (May 1973), we should expect that voters and members differ in their preferences among the different candidates. Moreover, we should expect that not only the candidate preferences are different but also the motives to select him/her. In this Paper, we explain the differences among the preferences of voters and party members in candidate selection to contribute to the ongoing debate about the effect of using primaries in party candidate selection. To do so, we use novel survey data from the local open primaries held in Barcelona in 2014 for the selection of the mayor candidate for the Catalan Socialist Party.