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John M. Avery, legislative reference librarian. ; Mode of access: Internet.

The top-two primary recently approved in several states in the U.S. eliminates the closed party primaries and creates instead a single ballot in which the Örst and second place winners pass to the general election. We conduct a theoretical analysis to compare the electoral consequences of the top-two primary with those of the closed primaries. Each primary procedure induces a sequential game with three stages: candidate-entry stage, primary election, and general election. We analyze the equilibria of these games and show that the top-two primary contributes to political moderation. In particular, when the median voter is an extremist, the closed primaries always generate an extreme winner and yet the top-two primary can generate an equilibrium with a moderate winner. Further- more, when the median voter is a moderate but his/her partyís median partisan is an extremist (and some additional mild conditions hold), the closed primaries always generate an extreme winner while the top-two primary always generates a moderate winner. We also show that the top-two primary may increase the number of swing states since, in certain cases, the party-affiliation of the winner under the top-two primary may not coincide with the party affiliation of the median voter

"Primary elections for choosing party leaders and candidates are now becoming commonplace in Europe, Asia and America but questions as to how much they hinder a party's organizational strength and cohesion or affect electoral performance have largely been ignored outside of the USA. 'Party Primaries in Comparative Perspective' gives a much-needed conceptualization to this topic, describing the function and nature of primary elections and providing a comparative analytical framework to the impact of primaries on the internal and external functioning of political parties. Elaborating on the analytical tools developed to study the US experience this framework engages with primary elections in Europe and Asia offering a theoretical, comparative and empirical account of the emergence of party primaries and an invaluable guide to internal electoral processes and their impact."--